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incorporated subversion » Un-Managing Learning Management Systems - A possible future for online learning:

Interesting debate opening up on Scott Wilson's first piece on Learning environments of the future. This is James Farmers take on the question - followed by a reply I have left on his site .....I am still trying to write a substantial post but will keep posting bits until I finally get it together.

James says "Take, for example, a typical tertiary student. In any one semester they may well be enrolled in four units each with an online presence each lasting effectively 13-14 weeks… now if each unit has a community and you ask that student to join these communities and keep a blog in each one… the question arises as to whether they would or not… and I’m betting that they wouldn’t (I certainly couldn’t be bothered). Factor into this the matter that they don’t ‘own’ their blogs (the community owns them), they most likely will just get archived / put away somewhere after the term has finished and the fact that probably (certainly presently) their ability to format / develop their bog individually is limited to, if their lucky, a new banner… and I think you’ll get some pretty unmotivated learners.

However, if that learner has their own blog ‘outside’ of the central, managed environment then things can start to look a bit different. Let’s say that in this case they are studying four units and they can simply create categories for each one (so postings relevant to that unit can go there and to their main blog if appropriate), that that category is then aggregated into the ‘central’ area (where unit guides, copyrighted study materials, core materials etc. can also be found) and that this blog also serves as a portfolio cum social tool for the student in question (as each learner has also been furnished with their own aggregator). The student in question owns the content, they are able to develop their blog as they choose and do with their content as they please, they are able to develop an online presence over an extended period of time and become parts of communities through their blog (communities that will form as naturally as communities form in f2f college) and they are able to subvert the technology in many wonderful ways (podcasting, photoblogging, vogging etc. etc.). It’s also their responsibility… and that is a great teacher in itself."

My reply follows:

Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles - Robin Good's Latest News:
Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles

Been desperately looking for free pictures lately to try to brighten up the usual dull project reports. And when aimlessly surfing my RSS feeds - diversion tactic from getting down to work - stumbled on this brilliant listing of free photos.

Bit of techy fun, this. Spent much of the last day messing around recording MP3s. Its a bit of a bodge. But I have some good quality audio voice recordings. Still doesn't do what I want to though. Want to be able to record tow audio tracks simultaneously - both using headphone inputs on my powerbook.I'm coming to the obvious conclusion it can't be done - at least not without buying and lugging around another bit of kit - an audio mixer. Trouble is they seem to be over specified for what I want.

Anyway why am I messing with this.

First I want to try launching an on line podcast magazine for education and training in Europe. There is great work going on at the moment and fine research but it is hard to find out about. And for many non native English speakers talking is much, much easier than writing. Want the two headphone solution for interviewing people.

Secondly, I am intrigued by the idea that a simple audio recording set up could be a great way to help teachers and trainers make compelling multi media e-learning materials.

England's e-university venture ended in failure, but Scotland's is going from strength to strength, says Andy Moore EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Top scholar, Tuesday October 19, 2004

Should be doing my travel claims but this is more interesting. In a pretty ordinary e-learning journalism piece on the success (blah-blah) of Scotland's e-university, Neil Johnson, a biology teacher at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, described as "an advocate of the programme" says: "Scholar suits all learning styles as it enables students to learn from different materials in a self-directed way."

Nothing strange about that quote - could find it in a hundred adverts for e-learning systems and materials. But what does it mean?

Lets look at the learning styles thing first. I do not hold that different people have different set learning styles. I think we all have different learning styles for different subjects, at different times and places, for different purposes in different contexts. heck - my learning style certainly changes after a few cups of strong coffee in the morning. Or - another personal example - I need to learn something very fast about Logical Frameworks for Evaluation - I will definitely use a different learning style than if I had more time to do a considered and proper job. I would call the style I am using quick and dirty.

Is It Time for a Moratorium on Metadata?

Scott Leslie from Ed Tech Post points to this "great article by Dick Bulterman titled "Is it Time for a Metadata Moratorium".

Bulterman says "For nontext data - such as video, images, audio, and so on - direct mining is difficult, but exactly at the point that metadata might be useful, manual creation simply doesn't get done because creating useful metadata descriptions (the proverbial thousands of words) is not in the critical path of content creation."

Haven't read the article (it's queued for printing, but a couple of breakfast time thoughts occur. It is pretty obvious that metadata is not working. I struggle to think up apposite key words for straightforward papers - let alone multiple metadata fields reflecting the complexities of multi faceted learning materials. Furthermore I stick to my contention that most learning materials have always been and will continue to be created by teachers and trainers. They simply do not see metadata creation as a part of their everyday work.

Solutions?

• Simplify the required metadata to say the extended Dublin core. OK - but we said we needed all these fields in the first place - are we now saying they are not necessary?
• Get someone else to do the metadata thing e.g. librarians. Problem here is that to be effective metadata has to reflect the use of the materials - not just the creators intention.
• Deploy agents to fill in parts of the metadata- interesting but I still doubt that software can be that clever.
• Develop distributed metadata - reflecting the use of education materials - this is the most promising answer but still some way off being effective.

My other big worry in who is to use the metadata. Or, putting it slightly differently - who is it for. Up to now most educational metadata is for teachers - to help them find and sequence learning experiences for students. Yet - if we accept the idea that as Scott Wilson asserts - the VLE of the future will be learner oriented - then learners themselves will have a pretty big say in what learning material they access to use. My guess is that in many situations they already do - despite the attempts of many VLEs and LMS systems to 'control' learning.

This implies a completely different take on what sort of metadata might be available or useful.