Sunday, August 17, 2008

Leadership and Learning Technologies

This post may become a story for OhmyNews after the Learning Technologies show in Jan 2009. Comments will link to other posts.

When I first looked at the "Towards Maturity" model I got the impression that pressure from senior management was not a very significant driver for e-learning projects. Now that the Web is better accepted as part of most organisations there could be more evidence of formal policy and other support. I could not arrive at any definite conclusion from conversation at the event in 2008. So maybe other sources will give some clues.
BETT showtime for Silverlight

This is another draft for a future story. Nowadays fewer computer companies attend trade events. Apple was not at drupa for example. Schools seem significant enough that Apple may well be at BETT. Adobe and Microsoft are also probable, a rare chance to compare progress on Silverlight and Flash/ AIR. My impression was that Microsoft had less of a profile for Grava in 2008 than in 2007 but this is likely to change.

Comments welcome. More posts on this later.
Byron, is the panic over?

There was a lot more to the Byron Review than was reported in most UK media. It included material that could be argued to leave open the possibility that the Web offers benefits for education. At least some of the research could be followed up during the rest of 2008.

From the conclusion section, Usha Goswami (PDF)


Of course, humans can use language (“inner speech”) and cognitive
self-regulation to inhibit the impact of learning that is not useful, and to quarantine what is imaginary from what is real. As younger children tend to have poorer language skills and poorer quarantining abilities, learning from new media could be speculated to have stronger effects on younger children.
Alternatively, as older children are more responsive to the peer group and
have the skills required to seek out certain kinds of input from new media, it could be speculated that new media that is endorsed by the peer group will have stronger effects during the adolescent years. Hormonal and other brainrelated changes during adolescence make this a time when all children question their identities and their “autobiographical selves”. New media can offer learning experiences relevant to resolving some of these questions, just like any other form of experience. A priori, new media do not seem likely to be less influential as a source of information, however, there is no relevant research that I am aware of..
UK bandwidth, draft damage check for BETT

This post is the start of a draft story for Ohmynews around Jan 2009. There really is a policy within UK education to make the most of broadband. However it is not going to work in my honest opinion because there is not much of a policy from the bit that used to be the DTI and is now harder to make out than what used to be education.

Slightly off topic I think publishing as in text and fairly small graphics is still an option for the UK. Video etc, both production and distribution, depends on somewhere with lots of fibre.

Back on topic, this post will be followed by others, links in comments.
I have added a comment to the Critical Management site. I had almost given up on it but have been told there will be an update sometime soon that will reflect the content from the Web 2 meeting.

My comment

publishing technology
new
Submitted by willpollard on Sun, 08/17/2008 - 09:37.

oh dear, all the formatting seems to have vanished, should use full stops and capital letters. So far I have also found that downloading documents is a bit hit and miss. some don't work as i find it. What is XML, bibTEX, tabbed? Is this explained anywhere? Have you looked at Scribd? Simply put, they take care of all the hosting for you. How their business model works is a mystery. Lots of networking and comment possible as well. Not much on critique as yet but easy enough to load stuff up. Also, EPUB is worth a look as a format. Sony Reader will support this in the UK from next month. Not sure how to create EPUB but it looks possible. blog http://learn9log.blogspot.com


My take is that this is a quality issue. There is content on the site, a system to publish. It could work better, so how could it change?