Exploring Educational Technology
Weblog about using mobile devices and social software in higher education
TAGSExplorer analysis of the #NPF14LMD Twitter hashtag shows over the past 2 years of the project there have been 126 Twitter users involved in 663 conversions around the project.
Below is a video screen grab of playback of 2 years of #npf14lmd project tweets:
Starting the #dp4byod project
We are launching a community of practice of members of the Ako funded research project on Learners and mobile devices. You can find us via the following social media curation tools:
Based upon our experiences and subsequent brainstorming conversations at the ECTEL2013 Conference where @ATZ119 (Laurent Antonczak) and I (@thomcochrane) participated in the Mobile Learning Creativity Workshop and presented a paper was born the Tack, skål, IKEA challenge. We were challenged by the Swedish delegation (@larsnorqvist, @Isaja, @AndreasOlsson7) to share a non-PowerPoint presentation that illustrated our approach to using communities of practice and social media for lecturer professional development – getting lecturers to “think differently” about teaching and learning. Basically we give lecturers an experience of being a learner themselves within an authentic context where we model the educational use of mobile social media – hoping that they will then use this practice with their own students. One of the keys is rethinking assessment strategies and integrating the use of mobile social media in their courses.
Lars Norqvist (@larsnorqvist) sent us the challenge to participate virtually in the “Learning in Focus” Conference in Umea, Sweden, 12-13 November 2013: “I write to you because of the brilliant idea of a tack,skål, IKEA-session. The session has somewhat developed an idea here at a conference in Northern part of Sweden. Below you can see two videos. One presents the general idea about our research and one presents a challenge to you for the conference.
I would be really glad if you can present your work about teaching, learning, recognition of students learning as a kind of modelling technology – if possible.”
Here are links to Lars’ video intro and challenge:
And here is our attempt at creating a mobile social media video playlist in response:
The final contribution to the “Learning in Focus” Conference can be found at http://larandeifokus.se/modelling-technology/
Hopefully the first of many collaborations with the Swedes and the Kiwis 🙂
We are hosting a week-long workshop during 25-29th November that will explore augmenting mobile movie production. If you are interested in participating please rsvp to thomcochrane@gmail.com or via Twitter to @thomcochrane or @ATZ119
This workshop aims to give participants the skills to create innovative mash-ups of three of the unique affordances of today’s smartphones, tablets and phablets:
This workshop will explore scenarios for innovative and collaborative team projects using these tools. It will leverage the expertise of two academic advisors (Cochrane & Narayan) with specialty in Mobile Social Media, and pair this with the expertise of two international mobile film making specialists: Antonczak (NZ & France) and Keegan (UK).
The four key objectives of the workshop are that:
The Augmenting Mobile Movie Production Workshop will focus upon participants forming production teams (4 people) to create an authentic augmented mobile movie project using a mashup of YouTube/Vimeo/Vyclone/Vine and Google Maps, and create a Wikitude World from this content. These projects will then be presented and critiqued to/by the entire workshop participants, and shared for feedback from global experts.
Participants will need to bring:
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Here is a short introduction to 6 critical success factors for mobile learning via the Adventures Of Tin Man. Based upon a BJET paper available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01384.x/abstract, and an RLT paper “Secrets of Mlearning Failures” http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/19186.
The Tin Man comic series is available at: https://www.facebook.com/TheAdventuresOfTinMan
From Evernote: |
Presenting without Powerpoint |
I have been asked several times to blog a “how to present without PowerPoint” post, so due to popular demand here it is!
The first question of course is WHY? Apparently almost everyone, including mobile learning experts, default to using PowerPoint to ‘present’ and ‘teach’ – and herein is the key issue – it’s about changing the traditional teaching/learning paradigm that is all about transmission of content. I am interested in participatory and social forms of teaching and learning, and this is very difficult to do using PowerPoint. The second key issue is about enabling interaction and access beyond the model of locking the course content away until after the class, when the PowerPoint files are typically uploaded to the LMS for students to download and review after the class. The problem with this typical scenario is that there is no possibility of discussion or conversation before the class, students must have a copy of Microsoft Office to view the class content, and the PowerPoint slides are generally devoid of context or the class interaction and conversation that (hopefully) accompanied the ‘presentation’. This can be alleviated somewhat by uploading your PowerPoint slides to an openly accessible online host such as Slideshare, however the teaching/learning paradigm remains fundamentally unchanged.
Recently I tweeted during a particularly boring conference presentation:
| thomcochrane Thank you for reading your PowerPoint slides to me #ectel2013 19/09/13 10:46 PM |
Which generated more discussion than the presentation: https://twitter.com/thomcochrane/status/380644059578392577
I received a reply from @jontrinder
| jontrinder @thomcochrane thought you might appreciate/empathise with http://t.co/HcEV7k6oKI 19/09/13 11:27 PM |
This Dilbert comic strip provides a great summary of many PowerPoint presentation experiences
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-02-22/
More recently @ATZ119 provided a link to a blog post about presenting without PowerPoint that I think summaries many of the issues:
| thomcochrane Presenting without PowerPoint – take the risk and model authentic engagement with technology! http://t.co/vAaKCLgct7 #sharefest13 10/10/13 9:43 AM |
This blog post describes the writer’s experience of participating in a presentation that was devoid of PowerPoint, that used live interaction with web content instead, and the ‘fear’ that this engendered in the writer when they contemplated doing the same http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/presenting-without-powerpoint#! This got me motivated to make this blog post 🙂
Another key issue for me is that the vast majority of the world now access the Internet through their smartphones or other mobile devices (See the ITU 2013 statistics) – so material needs to be mobile accessible – PowerPoint or Slideshare are barely mobile accessible formats. Since the ability to screen mirror mobile devices has become baked into the OS of iOS, Android and Win8 over the past two years, mobile devices are now incredibly interactive and flexible presentation and teaching tools – no longer limited to personal productivity due to small screen size.
So what do I use? The tools I use need to be:
I have facilitated workshops on using these tools with @vnarayan for example:
http://is.gd/RsQOhA
Generally I will use a Mashup of mobile social media tools, linked via an outline with ‘live’ links via Evernote – a shareable mobile friendly multimedia note-taking App that is also a powerful presentation tool.
Because all my resources are collated and curated using social media, such as YouTube, Picasaweb, Soundcloud, Twitter, Storify, AudioBoo, etc… the Evernote page provides links to this media, which can either be viewed within Evernote’s own browser, opened in Safari (on iOS), or opened in the appropriate App. This approach requires a decent Internet connection, either via WiFi or 3G/4G as a backup. Generally I will purchase a local 3G/4G data SIM at the airport of whatever country I am visiting as my backup connectivity option. Increasingly Eduroam WiFi is available on University campuses in NZ/Australia/UK/Europe. My Evernote page is effectively a window into my online curated content that can be accessed via any Internet connected mobile device (smartphone, tablet, laptop) or desktop computer.
I will usually preload any video files onto my mobile device for off-line presenting just in case, and use the native video App to present these. Switching between mobile Apps is far quicker and less obtrusive than switching between Applications on the fly on a laptop or desktop.
My basic suite of presentation tools includes:
To facilitate live mobile device screen mirroring I use:
That is basically my mobile-friendly, audience participatory, presentation toolkit!
Sometimes I will use Prezi on the iPad or iPhone, however I find most people merely substitute Prezi for PowerPoint, rather than leveraging the collaborative editing and presentation facilities of Prezi, so I minimise my use of it, using it within a broader suite of mobile social media tools for a bit of variety, rather than do a complete presentation using only Prezi.
The key is getting comfortable with risk – being able to troubleshoot connectivity issues, and building in conversation/interaction into any presentation. The world of mobile social media is a rapidly changing space, and so experimenting with new tools is essential. Curating your content on social media sites means that you are not limited to one presentation tool and you can immediately share content and embed your content within Twitter conversations etc… and I can change my presentation notes and linked media anywhere anytime as inspiration happens or in response to the group of learners on the fly.
Here’s a couple of example presentations if you are interested:
Link to the ustream recording of the #mlcw12 (mobile learning and creativity workshop) at #ectel2012 conference in Saarbrucken, Germany on 20th September 2012.
http://ustre.am/_1J4Pd:1enO
Exploring Educational Technology 
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