That'SLife

Teaching Online – Hockly & Clandfield

Along with my colleague Nicky Hockly, I am currently halfway through (three weeks out of a total of six) an iteration of one of our online courses called ‘mLearning in Practice‘. We’ve just finished the first three weeks, concerned with big picture stuff, contexts and concerns – and now we’re moving on to the second half, which is more practical and leads to a final action plan for each participant. We have fourteen people from nine countries as far apart as Brazil, New Zealand and Russia.

The course is going extremely well, I think: the discussions are engaging, the content seems to be relevant and interesting to people, and discussions are wide-ranging and stimulating. In the first three weeks we have had 580 forum postings from sixteen people (that includes Nicky and me) in seven forums. This strikes me as an extraordinary quantity of posts, particularly as a very small percentage of them has been ‘me too’ style postings – indeed, most of them have been content-driven and have pushed discussions forward. It’s a hard life being an online tutor – and just as hard being an online participant in a course that works.

And that, of course, led me to thinking about why it works… [ more after the fold ]

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This is a difficult post to write – the most difficult one I’ve ever written, in fact. And my mouse is poised over the ‘Post’ button as I sit here thinking… You shouldn’t really have to share this kind of thing with the world, because ideally it shouldn’t happen. But, after much reflection, I can see it’s the only way of ensuring that I can get on with my life properly and put a particularly distressing episode behind me – an episode not of my own making, but one that is giving me sleepless nights, keeping me from Twitter and email, and – well – simply making my life miserable. The fact that this post has taken an entire day to write, and now totals over 5,000 words (I know – but please give it fifteen minutes, if you can), should give you a good idea of how much it has affected me.

It’s also a kind of liberation, a setting straight of the records and a chance for others to see that life doesn’t have to be the way it is, that bullies don’t win – and that you should treat people with respect whilst ensuring that they do the same to you. You shouldn’t have to put up with vile rumours being spread about you online or off – it’s not right. You know that, and so do I.

[ a note before I start ] If you are being bullied online, check out this page for legal information and advice: http://cyberbullying.us/blog/advice-for-adult-victims-of-cyberbullying.html . Also check the local laws in your country and the country of the person harassing you – you’ll surely have contacts or can ask someone for a suitable recommendation. Note also that it is illegal to harass, victimise, threaten, bully or blackmail people on Twitter, by email or any other electronic means. Tweets, emails, etc. which display this behaviour are just cause for launching a criminal investigation and can lead to criminal prosecution. If this is happening (or has happened) to you, you should seek legal advice. December 17th this year is Anti-Bullying Day – maybe you can help someone? And, having said that, here’s my story…

What would you do if you received a flurry of emails from someone, one of which said they hoped you had a massive stroke and then died slowly and painfully from terminal cancer whilst recovering in hospital? What if the same person tried to blackmail you into talking on the phone? What if the same person threatened to make your life a misery everywhere you go? What if that person defamed members of your family that they had never even met? And what if they were spreading malicious gossip about you to people they meet at conferences and events? What would you do? How would you feel? If you’re ready, here’s the punchline right at the beginning – and, before you go elswehere, can I just make entirely sure that you understand that this is real, not some kind of pastiche – this is happening to me, and it could equally happen to you one day.

My name’s Gavin and I’m being bullied online.

There, I said it – and at first glance it may seem a little humorous that a man in his mid-forties would claim such a thing, but that’s the plain truth of the matter. It might even seem a bit shameful to you, and you may be tempted to turn away now and go somewhere else for your news, but I urge you to read this because it may be useful to you at some point in your online life. And, if you read the article linked above, you’ll see I’m not alone. My apologies also to those of you who have been tempted over here because you’re expecting the usual diet of iPad, iPhone, SL and technology-related fare.

But, you see, this is serious. So serious that today I am on the verge of going to the police to have them investigate the following charges: stalking, cyberbullying, defamation of character and blackmail. I suspect I may have your attention now…

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“Hello World” is traditonally the output of the first computer program a novice writes in any new language. This weekend I decided to do my own ‘Hello World‘ for the iPhone and see if I could come up with a working app for The Consultants-E which would aggregate our social media presence into one place. The app is a very simple idea. Taking (mostly) XML-compliant RSS feeds, it feeds them into pre-designed templates which format the information for the iPhone screen. And this is what it looks like…

1) The ‘About’ Screen

( click to embiggen )

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CC photo by radarxlove - http://tinyurl.com/2w9uvlg

Let’s face it, some people are never going to do the work, are they? They’re too busy, or they can’t write… or they simply can’t be bothered, or they’d rather spend the time or money on something else, or…

That’s why you’ll find copies of the books colleagues have written on file sharing sites, you’ll find blog posts posted elsewhere under a different name, you’ll find slides from presentations inserted into the presentations of others (the blatant one at English Australia this year was all the more delicious because I was sat in the audience), articles re-written and re-published under another name, etc., etc.

The big question, of course, is does it matter? Well, I suspect that there’s some kind of middle ground here.

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I’ve spent a large part of the past year and a bit thinking about mobile technologies and mLearning – my colleague Nicky and I started researching in mid 2009 as part of her preparation for a talk at IATEFL last year (the one I missed because the room was full to bursting point and they wouldn’t let any more people in) and then continued as we worked through a book proposal and the design of our new mLearning in Action course. In the meantime, Nicky’s blog has been very busy with a plethora of mLearning posts.

And now I’m sitting here preparing a talk on mLearning which is already booked up for a few outings in 2011…

There’s been a lot of reading of websites, reports, books and blogs… a lot of discussion on various fora, some fun wine-fuelled brainstorming evenings in Spain and Australia and a couple of conferences. And one thing that has hit home is that there are quite a few misconceptions out there – and I’m just beginning to think about them now as I work towards a plan for the talk.

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I thought I’d have a go at English Raven’s Hidden Gems Challenge – to pick out a few back posts from this blog which new followers may have missed and which might provide a bit of amusement. So here goes…

• On Multitasking
  Much rubbish has been written on multitasking, on technology making us stupid. Bottom line – nobody yet knows what the effects will be.
• On Going Public
  This caused a right stir, so it did. A post about newcomers in social media over-selling themselves on Twitter in a desperate bid to get more comments, more hits and more online ‘luv’. As it happens, there were, at the time, lots of ‘techno-detractors’ playing this game, lots of old hands in the industry and it all seemed a bit too much like a desperate land grab to many who had served their time online. A timely reminder – it seems to be coming back again, trending on Twitter, as it were…
• Second Life – The Long Goodbye
  Spawning 136 comments in a few days, this post really did shake up the blog for a week or so. Having been a great defender and champion of SL over many years, many people were surprised to see me pulling out. I must say, though, that since they got rid of their international offices, cut back on support hours, sacked anyone working for them who was remotely interested in education and – yesterday – announced that educator discounts would disappear at the end of the year, I reckon the time is right. God knows what they´ll do next…
• A Passion for War(Craft)
  A fun, tongue-in-cheek pop at those who rail against technology (using technology, natch) and who claim to have their learners’ interests at heart when, often, they’re not really listening…
• DOGME ICT
  With the founders of DOGME reluctantly admitting that it might be a bit out of date (DOGME 2.0 mooted), and that the DOGME bible had been written before the rise of social media and Web 2.0, I thought it was time to drag DOGME kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Much fun ensued.. sort of….

If  like me you do a lot of web-based research, then this tip might help you – basically it allows you to save any webpage in Safari on the iPad as a PDF straight into an iPad app that will let you open it, annotate it and save the finished document as well as transfer it to your computer (with mark-up intact) or share it on DropBox, etc. For this little trick you will need the following:

1. A copy of Good Reader [ 99 cents isn't going to break the bank ]
2. A special bookmark added to Safari on the iPad

Once you have GoodReader installed on the iPad, go to Safari and open any website and add it to your bookmarks. Next, go to your bookmarks, click ‘Edit‘, find the bookmark and change the title to something like ‘Save to GoodReader PDF” and the link to the following:

javascript:pdf_url=location.href;location.href=’ghttp://pdfmyurl.com?url=’+escape(pdf_url)

[ that should all be on one line with no spaces...]

This handy little mini script asks the service http://pdfmyurl.com to turn the currently viewed page into a PDF. The big trick is adding ‘g‘ to the address (ghttp://) which actually tells GoodReader to download the resultant document.

Result? Each time you want to save a page as a PDF in GoodReader, all you need to do is load it up in Safari and use the bookmark you created. Note that if the page you’re trying to save is already a PDF, all you need to do is reload the page itself with a ‘g‘ in front of the ‘http://‘ part of the address.

If you need more powerful mark-up tools, try iAnnotate PDF.

UPDATE: May 3rd 2011
This bookmark in Safari on the iPad (one line, no spaces) will also download a webpage as a PDF and save it to Goodreader:

javascript:pdf_url=location.href;location.href=’ghttp://api.joliprint.com/api/rest/url/print/s/joliprint.com?url=’+escape(pdf_url)+’&disposition=attachment’

There are a couple of events coming up which you really shouldn’t miss if you’re into technology and teaching and – in the case of the second one – the use of virtual worlds in education. The first is next week on the 8th and 9th October and is the Third Virtual Round Table organised by Heike Philp, Shelly Terrell and Berni Wall. You can catch up with @TheConsultantsE people Nicky Hockly and Lindsay Clandfield as they celebrate the launch of their book Teaching Online. Sadly I’ll be in deepest, darkest Somerset and will only have access to a dial-up connection, so I’ll be missing that one.

The second event is the fourth Annual SLanguages Conference (October 15-16) which looks at language education in Second Life. Having launched the conference in 2007 and run it myself for three years, I’m looking forward to taking a backseat this year and merely being a member of the audience now that a committee have taken it over, largely in connection with our pulling out of Second Life over the next couple of months. Or at least I was…. Yesterday one of the organisers asked if I’d like to do a talk, so – in keeping with my current thoughts – I’ll be running a free-for-all discussion entitled ‘Second Life – Is It Worth It?‘ and look forward to seeing some of you there and hearing your thoughts.

And so backwards, to the recent mini-tour of Australia giving workshops on digital literacies… Read the rest of this entry »

Another in my occasional iPad-related posts…

I picked up an iPad Camera Connection Kit on the way back from Australia. The kit comes in two parts, both of which are small white dongle-type connectors that plug into the bottom of the iPad. The first accepts card media from cameras and other sources, the second give you a USB slot for attaching cameras, etc. But actually, I didn’t want it for either of those uses particularly…

The USB slot, in particular, is quite handy and versatile. You can plug USB headsets into it, amongst other things…

However, the real reason I wanted it was that, combined with iFile from the Cydia store, I can now plug thumb drives into my iPad and copy files from the iPad to the thumb drive (perhaps to share a PDF or a photo with someone) or from the drive to the iPad (documents from other people, etc.) This makes the iPad much more useful on the go. There’s even a great hack over here which enables you to connect up a proper external HDD. Doesn’t matter how closed Apple want their systems, there’s always a way around…

I’ve read a couple of ‘what have you got on your iPad?’ type posts, so decided to join in with a post of my own, of the main screen of my iPad. If you’re interested in iPads in education, try the newly-created Ning, iPads in Education…

iPad Main Screen - click to enlarge

So, from top to bottom, left to right, this is what currently resides on the home screen of mine [ note that when I do buy apps, I usually wait for a special offer advertised on something like AppShopper ]… Read the rest of this entry »

A post by Paul Maglione examines where ELT textbooks may be going in the not-too-distant future, with references to relevance, weight and other issues. In his post Paul links to another post by Graham Stanley in which, among other things, he talks of the wide availability of published material on illegal download sites. I’ve also not avoided this subject in the past on this blog, and copyright was also the subject of a cafe-style debate at the British Council Moscow Unconference at the weekend (more soon). I also set out some of my thinking about the future of publishing in a post last year: On Books, Publishers and Teachers. I haven’t much changed my mind, but a few things do occur to me…

Teachers here in Catalonia are preparing to return to school tomorrow, and to teaching on Monday. Some of them will be forced to take part in the new ‘laptops in the classroom‘ (or whatever it’s called) project and use new electronic coursebooks provided by publishers such as OUP, Burlington, etc. The teachers I know have had no training, and have had the summer to peruse a half-working demo of one unit copied from a USB stick. Now I suspect the kids will be excited not to be carrying the heavy coursebooks, and even to be allowed to touch a piece of gadgetry more exciting than a pen, but I have to say I feel sorry for the teachers. Without training, this is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster of a teaching experiment. Read the rest of this entry »

Aside from my post reviewing some iPad apps I’m using a lot, and the one on getting audio into Keynote on the iPad (and on the joys of jailbreaking…), I keep coming across new things which I think someone else out there must be interested in, so here’s another short post with a couple of tips…

The first goes back to Keynote, and it’s to do with fonts. I have a template which uses Calibri as the main (almost only) font for presentations. On transferring it to the iPad the fonts were all a little too big. I’ve been experimenting with this sporadically over the past few days and my conclusion is this: if you want to send a Keynote presentation over to the iPad, reduce all your fonts by one size in the font size drop-down (so, 18 becomes 14, etc.). This seems to work consistently for me and makes the presentations look perfect on the iPad. Coupled with the video and audio tricks in the post referenced above, I can now pretty much use the iPad as a conference talk device.

The other tip goes back to reasons for jailbreaking Read the rest of this entry »

There was quite a bit of fuss earlier this week about the ‘fact’ that multitasking is impossible and destroys our attention and means we don’t actually do anything properly… even the claim that no significant learning can take place if people are not 100% concentrated on the teacher and/or material. Ironically, of course, much of the fuss was made by people flitting between webpages supporting their beliefs, and Twitter, where they posted these opinions.

Now, forgive me my ignorance, but isn’t that good, useful and effective multitasking? And isn’t that, really, what most people mean when they speak of multitasking, rather than the supposed (theoretical? imagined?) image of young people surfing porn, answering emails, chatting on Messenger and listening to music in lectures – you know, the kind of image that gives real multitasking a bad name. Clearly trying to cook a gourmet meal, watch a film, listen to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and fix the car at the same time is not going to work. But, equally clearly, most of us multitask (in the normal sense of the word) quite effectively throughout most days. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just finished filling in the online registration form for the IATEFL Annual Conference 2011, to be held in Brighton. I’m going to do a talk on mLearning as this coincides nicely with a new book that Nicky Hockly and I are currently researching, and also with a new course (mLearning in Practice) which we’re launching in October of this year. Take a look at the talk abstract below, if you’re interested – any thoughts?

TITLE: Location, Location, Location: mLearning in Practice

ABSTRACT: In this workshop I will be looking at recent developments in mobile and handheld learning (mLearning) and the rationale for bringing connected, mobile devices into the classroom. The workshop will look at various applications which can be blended into classroom teaching as well as ways of incorporating mLearning into homework and extra-class study.

(A longer summary is viewable after the fold…) Read the rest of this entry »

Picture the scene… it’s about five years ago, pre-iPhone and iPad, pre-smartphone (more or less) and WiFi is still expensive in most places. You go into your local coffee chain on Sunday morning with your loved one or perhaps a group of friends, armed with the Sunday papers. Everyone pays an outrageous amount of money for a coffee with a name longer than it takes to drink it, they sit down and they start reading the papers. Nobody’s talking much…. Occasionally someone pops their head out of a broadsheet to comment on Tony Blair or someone, but generally it’s a nice quiet Sunday morning in company… the odd laugh….

Now, transpose it to today and I’m sitting in the same coffee bar with a friend. He’s reading a dead-tree paper and I’m reading mine on the iPad. The scene is the same, really – and so is the interaction. Except, of course, that since there’s free WiFi, I can also check related articles, clear up discussions when we don’t agree, etc., etc. Except that’s about to change – see this article from The Economist.

Now I don’t know about you, but I do so hate it when people tell me I can’t do something in public. It wasn’t rude five years ago when we were all reading dead-tree versions, so why is it rude now? Is it… no, say it’s not true…. is it because technology is involved? And that’s bad, obviously… Read the rest of this entry »