Derek's Blog

I've just spent the last two days in the Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, participating in a seminar titled "Advancing e-Education: Sharing NZ and Malaysian Experiences". The two days were orgainsed NZ Trade and Enterprise in collaboration with the Multimedia Development Corporation here in Malaysia. A group of around 16 NZ educational "experts" interacted with more than 50 representatives of the Malaysian Ministry of Education and local ICT vendors.

The photo above shows Murray Brown (centre) from the NZ Ministry of Education with Dr Norrizan Razali (right), senior manager in the Smart School Flagship department of the MDC, and Cik Chan Fong Mae (left), Principal Assistant Director in the Malaysian MoE - responsible for change management.

The two days established a useful point of contact between the two groups, with much to follow up. The Malaysians were particularly interested in our approach (in NZ) to building teacher capability in eLearning, and our approch to change management in this regard.

In his presentation to the group, Murray Brown provided an overview of the strategic approach being developed in NZ, as illustrated below:

For a run-time "Flash" version of the diagram Murray used click here.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Having left Sheffield this morning I made my way to Chelmsford this afternoon and had a great catch up with old friends at Ultralab. The photo is of the group of us having a meal at The Queen's Head in Maldon!

(From left) Richard Millwood, me, Pete Bradshaw, Jonathan Furness, Jo Gibson, Neli from Israel and Matt Eaves.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thursday at the Alt-i-lab conference in Sheffield
Today I'm attending a full day of workshops on ePortfolios - this morning is with the team from the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OPSI) who are sharing where they're at with the development of the Open Source Portolio product. It was useful to work through the online demo of the OSP to be able to visualise the way this product works - this demo is available for anyone to access and work through, providing you with a number of demo logins that have been populated to represent the view of different individuals.

The focus of our discussions this morning are the standards that underpin the OSP development. Release 2 of the Open Source Portfolio (OSP) [software] already makes extensive use of Sakai services and is technically built on the Sakai framework. Release 2.1 is planned for March 2006.

I see a lot of potential with where this project is heading, especially for us in NZ where we have plans for the use of ePortfolios as part of the Early Childhood ICT Framework, and the advantage we have with the National Student Index )NSI) which means we won't be faced with as many problems of data exchange between and among organisations and institutitions.

Having spent much of the week with the good folks from CETIS, I am interested
in the overview and explanation of the technical terms that Scott Wilson has provided on his weblog.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Interesting discussion today with Oleg Liber, director of CETIS here in the UK. He and the team at CETIS have been working on a variety of eLearning projects in recent years, one of which is Colloquia , an personalised learning environment (PLE) that resides on an idividual's computer. Colloquia is is an alternative to the traditional, server-based, institutionally-owned LMSs that underpin so many of our eLearning programmes, working in a peer-to-peer paradigm.

I am incredibly impressed with this product - originally developed in the late 1990s and operating in it's current version since 2002! The significance of the fact that it operates on the users own computer provides the highest level of personal control over the environment. The only other product that approaches things in a similar way is called Groove, developed by the originator of Lotus Notes, and bearing many similarities in structure and interface. Groove was recently acquired by Microsoft who plan to incorporate it into their Office Suite.

Groove operates within a dotNET environment, and works only on PCs. Colloquia is developed in Java, and operates on PCs or Macs. It's also free, which makes it pretty attractive. I've been discussing with Oleg the possibility of using Colloquia in NZ within some projects there. Hope we can make that happen!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 3:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Day one at the Alt-i-lab in Sheffield. A presentation from the chairperson of Digtial South Yorkshire provided an insight into why Sheffield has been chosen as the venue for the conference. Digital South Yorkshire is the specialist networking and support organization for Creative and Digital Industries (CDI) in South Yorkshire. The transformation of Sheffield from a predominantly steel producing area into a region with a wide range of digital and creative industries is really impressive.

Professor Diana Laurillard , Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit in the DfES , opened the conference with a strategic view of learning technology from the UK perspective, drawing from the material in their publication Harnessing Technology: Transforming Learning and Children??s Services. The encouraging thing about this presentation was how closely the strategic work in NZ parallels what is happening here.

A panel of other speakers provided perspectives on Measuring the Impact of e-Learning. Dr Paul Clark from the Open University focused on three measures; course completion, student satisfaction and cognitive change, providing examples from the OU experience to illustrate. Brad Wheeler from Indiana University counseled ??if you are going to measure, measure what you care about!??, suggesting measures that focus on behavioural, perceptual and financial impacts. Ed Walker from IMS focused on issues of sustainability and affordability, referring us to the IMS website for definitions of ??sustainable?? and ??affordable?? to help create a shared understanding of these terms.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After finishing up with meetings in London I've headed up to Newcastle for the weekend to stay with some close friends who have been living here for five years, working with an organisation called Mercy Ships. They have been overseeing the refurbishment of a roll-on, roll-off ferry that used to service 20 Danish islands.

The ship is being transformed into a 97-bed floating hospital, with accommodation for 300 people. It is expected to be commissioned at the beginning of next year and will then embark on a 17-month trip to some regions of Africa, dispensing aid and providing medical assistance as required.

Here are some photographs of me taking a tour of the ship yesterday - the first gives you some idea of the size of the vessel, the second is of me on the bridge, and third,in the engine room!

In the afternoon I travelled with my friend to Durham, where we strolled around the historic areas of the town, including the university. A highlight for me was a visit to the enormous Durham Cathedral where we took the opportunity of climbing to the top of the bell tower. This view from the top
looks down on an old castle that is now a part of Durham University.

Off to Sheffield this afternoon to link again with my MoE colleagues and prepare for the Alt-i-lab conference during the week.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a few days since my last entry as I've been preparing for and then travelling to London, where, over the past two days, I've been participating in a meeting between the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the UK and The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) from Australia.

The focus of the meeting has been to explore how we can work collaboratively together to progress the work in developing the e-Framework (formerly known as the ELF . The e-Framework is essentially a services oriented framework for education, and a lot of the initial work has been done on this by JISC.

Over the two days we spent time looking at a management and governance structure for moving ahead with this development, and today, we spent much of the time reaching agreement on the nature of the reference models that will be used to inform the work of the e-Framework. In the UK JISC has already advertised a Call for proposals to specify reference models for the e-learning framework. These projects are being funded through the Distributed e-Learning Programme. Total funding of ??750,000 is available for this work, with up to ??150,000 available per project which will be expected to start no later than March 2005 and run until 31 March 2006.

Enough of this detail however - more to come next week when I will be attending the Alt-i-lab event in Sheffield.

In the meantime, I'm about to travel up to Newcastle for the weekend to spend time with some Kiwi friends, watching the Lions play Otago!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to Richard Elliott of UNITEC for pointing me to this resource...

Titled Costs, benefits and ROI of e-learning the page provides links to resources that look at the costs (set up, development, delivery etc), the benefits of introducing e-learning and at the return on investment (ROI). Listed in order of entry with most recent first.

Many insitutions are asking questions about their ROI on eLearning, and this page has dozens of links that may prove helpful. I haven't looked at too many in detail, but was impressed with the one entitled Evaluating the Cost Effectiveness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction (PDF download) which presents a cost matrix tool by which the costs of online education and training can be tabulated and/or compared with the costs of the traditional education and training medium. The paper also has a useful summary of the history of distance education and eLearning to provide a context for the analysis.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to my colleague John Delany who has just arrived back from Canada for introducing me to this report titled Coming To Teaching in the 21st Century: A Research Study Conducted by The Galileo Educational Network. For those looking for a quick summary there's also a 14 page executive summary.

The report explores the idea that preparing teachers today requires critical examination of what it means to teach and learn in increasingly networked, technology-rich classrooms, and notes that most young people entering teacher
preparation courses in Alberta have not, themselves, experienced such classrooms.

The objectives of the study were to:

• identify and describe emerging, innovative pedagogical practices that prepare and support pre-service teachers to integrate technology effectively in their practicum and pre-service education;
  
• situate these emerging practices within the context of the research literature;
  
• generalize themes from individual cases that add to the body of research knowledge and theory about the factors that contribute to the successful and sustained use of innovative technology-based pedagogical practices within teacher education; and
  
• provide recommendations for future action in terms of teacher preparation.

1. Teaching and learning with technology is, fundamentally, a pedagogical rather than a technical matter.
   
2. Fluency with technology does not translate automatically into the ability to teach effectively with it.
   
3. Changes to transmissionist or presentational pedagogy and conventional teaching approaches on campus yield significant results.
   
4. Well-constructed digital environments provide engaging and meaningful interaction for students
   
5. Disconnects between campus and practicum experiences with technology integration impede the effectiveness of teacher preparation
   
6. New approaches to professional development partnerships and to field placement practices show promise in bridging the gap between campus and practicum experiences
   
7. Technology, infrastructure and support still present considerable challenges on campus and in schools.
   
8. Innovation is often a lonely road.

No great surprises in this report, but heartening to see such a weight of research behind it. Really interesting to see the emphasis on pedagogy over simply technological skills development, or an emphasis only on digital content use and distribution.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Recently released is the Education Podcasters Network , which aims to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.

While still in its infancy, the site offers some useful background on Podcasting, and has links to a number of Podcasts that cover a range of educational levels and subject interests.

Speaking of podcasts - take a look at Room 208's Web Page! , the website of a Multi-Age 3/4 Classroom located on the coast of Southern Maine. You can access a list of child-produced podcasts by clicking on the podcast link (iPod icon) on the main page.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)