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Making Smartphones work

David Hopkins — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:37:56 +0000

I love my smartphone, my iPhone. In addition to this, I love my iPad, but I’m not as enamoured by it as I am with my phone. Since I got my iPad I have found myself using my laptop even less (it’s only 2 years old so not, by any means, old or slow or a cumbersome weighty block of plastic with a tiny screen). But they could both be better.

Considering how I (we) use these new mobile devices I am surprised that there is less integration between apps. Let me explain:

When I click a link in an email it opens up the Safari web browser. Simple and easy to understand. But when I click a link in an email, or on a webpage, to a Facebook update, to a tweet, or to something on LinkedIn or something else that I use an App to manage, the Safari web browser is used. I don’t use the browser on my phone (or iPad) to use those services, use the app I’ve installed and configured for my account(s). I am not logged in to the website version of those services (and many others) but I am logged into the App.

Why can’t the OS be configured to allow it to ‘learn’ from the apps I have installed. Let’s have them learn that a link to something on Twitter (tweet, profile, hashtag, etc) means I want to use the App and not the web browser?

Perhaps this is just ‘limited’ to iOS devices? Perhaps to get what I want I need to think outside the ‘Apple’ box and go Android or Windows … ?

Or have I missed something so fundamental to iOS and it can already do this? Comments below please if you agree with me, have a handy hint to help me sort this out, or just want to gloat because your (smart)phone already does this.

Reflection on #LWF12 (updated)

David Hopkins — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:55:49 +0000

This week was the Learning Without Frontiers conference at Olympia (Jan 25/26). Below are a few pictures from the day (if it’s not mine, then credit is given below the picture where credit is due).

I also used Instagram for my photos, just to add something ‘different’ to them. I have learned, however, that it is better to use the standard phone camera for the original picture and then process that inside Instagram then to take the picture with the app, the result is slightly better quality).

Here are some picture galleries for you, from LWF delegates who’ve uploaded and shared them:

Instagram (from Inkstagram) - ink361.com/#/tag/lwf12
Flickr - www.flickr.com/search/?q=%23LWF12

Lego Ducks

Jacob Kragh, LEGO Education President – each of us was given a pack of 6 bricks and asked to make a duck, here are mine!

Stephen Heppell (@heloukee)

Stephen Heppell engages the audience in his usual amazing and inimitable fashion showing us students and learning spaces designed for the modern world … and a great picture of his boat too! He is championing ‘shoes off learning’ and ‘bring a browser’ (like bring your own device, but simpler) and captured the mood of the audience.

Graham Brown-Martin

Graham Brown-Martin introducing the final sessions of the day.

Martin Rees – ‘From Here to Eternity’

Stehpen Heppell / CloudLearn.net

Stephen Heppell in one of the amazing ‘pods’ (see below) showing the results of the CloudLearn.net project. I have read (and re-read) the report and hope to blog on it at some point, but I’ve a few ideas to get clear in my own head first.

Andrew Eland / Google (@heloukee)

TED Talks (@heloukee)

As someone who enjoys the TED talks it was great to hear from one of the main people responsible for them, and about it’s history.

Dame Ellen MacArthur

Dame Ellen MacArthur demonstrated a very focussed and amazingly simple view on life: go out and embrace it (my words), from her early sailing adventures to the completion of her world famous sailing exploits, to the formation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

BBC Model B, in the BBC ‘pod’

Nostalgia in the BBC pod – I didn’t have one of these but I started out on a ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, while my friends had the BBC Model B (as did my primary school, and only the one, on a trolley … !). No, I couldn’t remember any code other than “10 Print ‘Hello!’”

Noam Chomsky on The Purpose of Education (@heloukee)

The opening keynote from Noam Chomsky (disappointingly pre-recorded) was interesting but a rather dry start to the conference. Noam said in his opening keynote “Be obedient, don’t ask too many questions, don’t cause a crisis of democracy”, as well as the “purpose of education is to teach people how to learn on their own” and (at last, just what I’ve found all my life) “a person can do magnificently on a test, and understand very little”.

Watch Noam Chomsky’s keynote on Blip.TV here: Noam Chomsky – The Purpose of Education

Pod-tastic! (@heloukee)

Learning Without Frontiers #LWF12

David Hopkins — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:53:10 +0000

For all those who are as equally excited as I am, next week is the 2012 Learning Without Frontiers Conference. If you’re going and would like to meet up then please drop me a line, leave a message, tweet me, etc, etc.

I received an email this morning and have set up my LWF Profile page, which you can find here (plus links to find me on different networks, not that you needed telling):

LWF12 Profile Page

So, what am I looking forward to:

Sir Ken Robinson: Unfortunately Sir Ken is going to be closing the Conference via video-link, but it is something not to be missed, if his other speeches are anything to go by.
Stephen Heppell:I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Stephen several times here at Bournemouth University – what seems a random journey through his thoughts and ideas at the time, when Stephen speaks, will end up as a carefully constructed story with which you will lose youself in. Amazing and inspirational.
Steve Wheeler:The ‘VLE is dead’ is here again … should be good if we get the kind of debate this topic has had before … ?
Dame Ellen MacArthur: Speaking about her foundation and it’s linking of “education and business to inspire young people to re-think and re-design their future”. Should be good.
Conrad Wolfram: The man behind the Wolfram Alpha ‘computational knowledge engine’ … say no more!
Keri Facer: Looking at the changes change in education that are emerging around economics, personal data and social movements.
Jacob Kragh (Lego Education): Anything with Lego is fine by me, but what’s even better is how it can be used to educate and learn, “from renewable energy to green cities, after-school clubs to robotics from pre-school through the secondary education”
Andrew Eland (Google UK): the “Google story, the importance of STEM education, the UK’s failure to capitalise on its record of innovation and engineering and Google’s position on this” could be interesting, and worth a little time to listen to Andrew.

… and of course meeting so many of my Twitter buddies! See you next week.

What is a Learning Technologist (part 5)?

David Hopkins — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:40:09 +0000

Depending on where you work you might use the title Learning Technologist, Education Technologist, Instructional Designer, or something else, but essentially these roles are the same.

See the ‘related posts’ section below for links to the previous 4 posts in this series.

Here are a few excerpts from job descriptions for these roles that I found with a quick Google search, see for yourself:

“Provides pedagogic advice, guidance, encouragement and support on the use of technology to staff involved in teaching. Such processes involves mutual learning, and frequently contrast with the clear division of labour that characterises Instructional Design.”
Source: JISC – Recommendations for an accreditation scheme for learning technologists v. 4.6 (Consultation document 19/03/04)
“Promoting and the appropriate pedagogical use of e-learning through resources,
communication and assessment tools.”
Source: Bournemouth University – Job Description & Person Specification (PDF 55.70kb)
“Develop and institute logistical, instructional, and pedagogical policies for the creation and delivery of online courses.”
Source: UTD – Job Description

While reading this post last night - Learning Technology Trends To Watch In 2012 – I found the section on “Expanded Instructional Designer’s Role” quite interesting, not least as the expanded role sounded an awful lot like the work I am already engaged in?

“Captured in Clive Shepherd’s book, The New Learning Architect, the idea that an instructional designer has one only one function – course creation – seems outdated. Although many will continue to develop courses, instructional designers will need to think in broad terms about how to close learning gaps. This means understanding the strategies that underlie diverse possibilities for learning, both formal and informal, traditional and nontraditional, online and print and face-to-face and virtual.”

Many of the people I converse with on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, at work, at conferences, etc, are also of this opinion: that it is more than just the final result that the LT (Learning Technologist) is interested in, that the LT can be a vital part of the whole process in getting the learning materials researched, set up, assessed, etc. Convincing others of this is not always easy.

“For example, instructional designers are managing communities of practice, curating content, facilitating online discussion groups, organizing events and supporting of social media for learning. Instructional designers are often the proponents of innovation and the persuaders who convince upper management that interaction and collaboration will make for a smarter organization. As more instructional designers and educators see themselves as learning architects, the world will become a smarter place.”

Wow, this is me, am I now a Learning Architect?

Do you have a view or comment on this, or any other aspect of the role or industry you work in? If so then please leave a comment and open the discussion.

We are all Rock Stars! #edtech

David Hopkins — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:47:13 +0000

As I find myself getting closer to a ‘big’ birthday (thankfully not this year) I have realised that I am reminiscing just as much as I am reflecting (good for CMALT!), and not just about work. This post helped me with a thought process I’d been struggling to complete for a while:

“What music will you listen to for the rest of our lives”

The most emotional time of our lives (so far?) are when we are growing into adults, the late teens, and the music we listen to then will always be associated with the emotions we had and continue to have. This stands to reason as

“our relationships with music really gets going when we enter puberty, and becomes most intense from then through to early adulthood. This is no coincidence. It is music that plays when we fall in love, when our hearts break, when we discover sex and learn the meaning of true friendship.”

In my late teens I, like so many others, thought/dreamed of being a musical genius of the likes of Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, or Eddie Van Halen (there, you know my musical tastes now). It didn’t matter that I had no musical ability at all, but it did matter that I couldn’t work out if I was going to sing/shout (Dave Grohl, Freddie Mercury, David Coverdale, James Hetfield et al), thump some drums (Roger Taylor, Mick Fleetwood, Lars Ulrich, Dave Grohl again, etc) or strum the gee-tar (Joe Satriani, Slash, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Michael Schenker, etc). These were my heroes, not because they were famous or rich, but because they used a talent to bring me happiness, put a smile on my face during all the usual teenage troubles.

What I know now is that I am passed the (st)age of rock stardom, and many other kinds of stardom for that matter. BUT, and this is important, the age of self-publishing has given each of us the ability to put ourselves out there on the Internet, and bare our passion or interest for all to see, much the same as the song/lyric writers did in the songs I head-banged to as a spotty teenager.

The bands I grew up to were doing much the same I am doing now – they wrote their songs because they wanted to, just like many of us are writing our blogs because we want to. The likes of Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Queen, and Whitesnake are Rock Stars to me, just like people like Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth), Stephen Heppell (@stephenheppell), and Sir Ken Robinson (@sirkenrobinson) are held in such high esteem to many of us involved in learning today.

If you didn’t see this post last year, then please check out the video “Obvious to you, amazing to others“. When I read the article on music I immediately thought of this video – the people I looked up to musically, and still do, are doing the same as I’m doing here, we are all writing about experiences, passions, interests, life. Whether you have a recording contract and a number one hit single or write a blog about your passion (coffee, learning, technology, poetry, swimming, etc) doesn’t matter – to someone you are their Rock Star, just like you have people you look to and think of as your Rock Stars.

Rock On!

Image source

“Using QR Codes in Higher Education” Workshop: Jan 31st, 2012 #QRCode

David Hopkins — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:00:43 +0000

The Business School and Bournemouth University, in partnership with the Higher Education Academy (HEA) is pleased to announce a workshop on January 31st, 2012, on “Using QR Codes in Higher Education”, along with Dr. Milena Bobeva (@milenabobeva) of Bournemouth University and Andy Ramsden (@andyramsden) of University Campus Suffolk.

http://bs1.bmth.ac.uk/QRCodes

The workshop is

“… designed to take you on a journey of discovery, tailored to your own QR-experience. It is suitable for both people who are new to the QR-concept and those who have substantial experience and would like to build a network to extend the use of QR Codes in education through collaboration in joint projects.

Funding from the HE Academy (HEA), as part of their funding call in 2011, has made it possible to offer the opportunity for knowledge transfer and development of new skills and ideas through networking with people interested in QR Codes as a new form of communication channel.

“David and Milena will be joined by other respected QR experts such as Andy Ramsden of University Campus Suffolk to discuss with you the challenges and good practice in using the codes effectively.”

Tickets are limited and are based on a first-come basis and tickets can be obtained (for free) from the Workshop website (http://bs1.bmth.ac.uk/QRCodes). We will also be using Twitter and LinkedIn for networking and communications, links for these (and tickets) are below:

@QRBU

QR Codes in Higher Education

QR Codes @ BU

Lanyard Event: QR CodesBU

If you have any queries on the workshop then please contact our central email address of qrcodes@bournemouth.ac.uk – I will however reply to any comment/question left on my blog here

Download the workshop poster here:

You can follow our progress website (link above) and on the dedicated page I’ve set up below:

When being ‘social’ goes wrong (@tomscott)

David Hopkins — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:23:39 +0000

I was lucky enough to be present at a presentation from Tom Scott (@tomscott) today at Bournemouth University, where he used the following as part of his demonstration of the possibilities for Social Network(ing) – “Looking at social media in a very different way”:

Recorded at TedX Sheffield in 2010, Tom uses real-world examples of what has happened in different situations around the world, and puts them together to demonstrate how close we are (or how easy it is) to a riot (topical?).

We are already doing so much that has implications beyond our current understanding of ‘online behaviour’, all Tom has done here is join some dots as to one possible outcome of one little action, and the way in which it can escalate, be misinterpreted, and grow out of control.

Makes you think? It did me.

Tom’s website is http://www.tomscott.com/

No related posts.

Top 10 Education & Teaching Blogs

David Hopkins — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:43:04 +0000

Congratulations to the other 9 entrants to the “Top 10 UK Education and Teaching Blogs” alongside my blog Don’t Waste Your Time, at number 8.

As of 1/12/11

Described as the “fundamentals of working with bloggers are the same as with traditional journalists at traditional media outlets: respect their schedules; take time to read their material to learn their interests; and only contact them if/when they want to be contacted.”

It is also with pride that I share a place on the list of “Top 10 UK Education and Teaching Blogs on Twitter” at number 8.

As of 1/12/11

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A new PLN?

David Hopkins — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:56:18 +0000

I’ve been fascinated by the ideas of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for ages now, pretty much ever since I first heard about it.

Perhaps this is why Steve Wheeler’s (is that @timbuckteeth or @stevewheeler? But that’s another story) latest blog post made me think long and hard about it again. The images/slides below are from Joyce Seitzinger’s (@catspyjamasnz) “Professional Learning Environment (PLN) model” presented recently in Melbourne, Australia.

Click the images above to read Steve’s original post on the sildes, as presented by Joyce.

It is important to note that the tools listed in the ‘deisgn’ slide are not the recommended tools but rather an indication of what ‘could’ be used, and that you insert your own personal preferences for each segment.

So, what do you think … does it strike a chord for you like it did for me.

PS. here is my PLN that I ‘devised’ back in December 2009:

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Nomination(s) for the 2011 Edublog Awards #eddies11

David Hopkins — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:36:59 +0000

We are here again, that lovely time of year when we get to say something nice about each other and help us get the recognition that money can’t buy (?).

Nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards are open, and here are mine.

Best individual blog: Steve Wheeler – Learning with ‘e’s.
Best individual tweeter: There are so many to choose from, but I’m going for Steve Wheeler / @timbuckteeth
Best ed tech/resource sharing blog: James Clay – e-Learning Stuff
Best twitter hashtag: #edtech
Best free web tool: Twitter
Best educational use of podcast: @Documentally
Lifetime achievement: Prof. Stephen Heppell

OK folks, let’s see what & who you like this year … click here for the Edublog 2011 nomination hashtag: #eddies11 and make you own nominations here: http://edublogawards.com/nominations/

No related posts.