Free journal issue on #OER Open Educational Resources #socialInclusion

Here is a great opportunity to look at the Journal of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia. They have just released FREE ACCESS to the Distance Education Special Issue on Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Social Inclusion (Volume 33, issue 2). Not sure how long the free access will last, so take a peek, it is a list of interesting articles.


It is a great issue with articles on the benefits and policy factors when working with OERs. Here are just a couple of the articles:

 Equity considerations for open educational resources in the glocalization of education by Julie Willems and Carina Bossu. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01587919.2012.692051


The OER mix in higher education: purpose, process, product, and policy: http://tandf.msgfocus.

com/c/1a5vFRSsK2w58G4FGNRj4xDcO>
Samuel Nikoi & Alejandro Armellini

Open educational resources: education for the world http://tandf.msgfocus.com/c/1a5vGemAkhUA8uGGLFNSRIMiX>
Thomas Richter & Maggie McPherson

Making a difference—inclusive learning and teaching in higher education through open educational resources http://tandfmsgfocus.com/c/1a5vGAQHUxj58jiHQxKsETVp6&gthttp://tandfmsgfocus.com/c/1a5vGAQHUxj58jiHQxKsETVp6>
Christine Hockings, Paul Brett & Mat Terentjevs

Read More

Maximizing your #impact as a #researcher: free handbook and blog

First of all, let me start of this blog with a link to the handbook on 'Maximizing the Impact of Your Research'. A 298 page (HUH!) handbook on how to track your research impact, both via more classical numbers (times cited...) and contemporary media (social media). It is a serious handbook, and the author is open to any comments, so feel free to add any ideas (j.tinkler at lse.ac.uk). The handbook is published by the London School of Economics and Politics.

For those having less time, a much shorter, yet useful blogpost written by Deborah Lupton was published in the wonderful Impact of Social Sciences blog from the London School of Economics and Politics. It covers all the strategies social scientists (or any other researchers or engaged people at that) can use to enhance their digital profile. She explains each of the next parts in detail in the post, so I will only briefly touch the list of actions we can undertake as Deborah suggests:

Building networks (oh yes, Google+, Facebook, ...): to get connected with people interested in similar areas.
Public engagement (via blogs and such): to get ideas out in the open and be able to discuss them with peers.
Receiving feedback (any comment enabled social media will do): our ideas or research or actions are nothing if not scrutinized by others with experience.
Establishing an e-profile (what I would call a digital identity): I feel this should be at the top of the list, as trust and respect is at the core of being able to discuss ideas and share them or get them disseminated through networks.
Curation and sharing of content: this can be done fully manual (you select and retweet, blog, list, newsletter... any content that you encounter and find of interest) or it can be done semi-automated (Pinterest.com, paper.li, storify, scoop.it...)
Teaching (I would add learning to this, as I am a believer in building upon each others strengths): engaging learners in courses or learning activities.

Looking at the handbook and the post, I would add 'analytics' as a very important part of your research/person digital impact. For with analyzing who is following you, which items get picked up... you can get an idea of your followers. On the other hand, a blog is my blog, so serendipity should also get its place.

Thanks Bruno Meessen to bring this blogpost to my attention!

Read More

Plan your corporate #mobile learning with Amit Garg

Amit Garg is one of the facilitators in the upcoming, free, online course on Mobile Learning (mLearning). He is one of the co-founders of UpsideLearning.com. Amit will take us all on a tour to see what it takes, how to strategies and successfully implement mobile learning for corporations and business organizations. He has been implementing corporate learning solutions for the last 12 years. You can find Amit's MobiMOOC course page here, his online webinar will be of interest to anyone who wants to embed or improve their knowledge management levels inside her/his corporation.

Below you find a powerpoint on the subject of mLearning at the workplace. But first a bit more on the course.MobiMOOC is a free, international, online course on mobile learning (mLearning). Join us to collaboratively enhance our mobile learning knowledge.  

More information:

Where: online.

Cost:  this is a free course. Register for free: you can sign up for the course by becoming a member of the MobiMOOC google group. 

When:  8 – 30 September 2012

Central course location: http://mobimooc.wikispaces.com

What type of learning: guided collaborative, peer-to-peer learning: lots of discussions and sharing of experiences, overviewed by mobile learning experts.

Participate in the MobiMOOC Award contest: if you participate in the MobiMOOC award, your mobile learning project overview can earn you 500 USD. See here for more information.

Topics: 12 mobile learning topics will be covered, guided by expert facilitators in the subject.  Topics covered: introduction to mobile learning, planning mobile learning (Inge de Waard, Belgium), mobile learning curriculum (Adele Botha, South-Africa), corporate mLearning (Amit Garg, India), augmented learning (Victor Alvarez, Spain), global mLearning topics (John Traxler, UK), mobile health (Malcolm Lewis, Australia), mobile activism in education (Sean Abajian, USA), serious games with mobiles (David Parsons, New Zealand), mobile learning theory and pedagogy (Geoff Stead, UK), mobile learning tools (all of the participants), mLearning for developing regions (Michael Sean Gallagher, Korea/USA/UK) and train-the-trainer solutions (Jacqueline Batchelor, South-Africa).

Here is a taste of what Amit will serve us during the course, focusing on implementing mLearning at the workplace.

Implementing mLearning In The Workplace from Upside Learning

Read More

Designing #mLearning for people with #disabilities or learning difficulties

Last week I got a mail from Jenni Wright from Australia. She is a trainer and she was looking for solutions that could help her optimize the already wonderful vocational courses that her company the BedfordGroup in Australia is setting up for adult learners. The challenge was that the learning environment should be secure for the Intellectual Property content portion, yet at the same time dynamic as a MOOC AND - a tough one - if possible cater to people with learning challenges, whether it be disabilities or learning difficulties of any kind.

In the past years I did encounter more questions on solutions for learners with disabilities. And I feel that with the evolution of mobile technology some of these learning challenges can be met, although it stays a tough road to travel or find solutions on.

Here is what I came up with for Jenny. If any of you have additional ideas, feel free to add them. This is not my area of expertise and any help or ideas are more than welcomed.

1. A secure yet easy to enter and edit learning environment: I would suggest using a private wiki. Why: because the text is easy to edit, comments and discussions can be given on every page. But most of all, as a wiki has plain text, you can use free text-to-speech options to convert the text to audio-files. This means you can add an mp3 on every text page, providing the learner with an audio file. Another bonus of the wiki text, is that you can enlarge the text using key board short cuts. Thanks to Jenni I am contemplating to make all my MobiMOOC additions (week one) audio accessible as well. Just done one addition based on the draft text, simply to see what it gives. I used Pediaphon to get the MP3 files. Mostly because it is easy and it also includes an option to put an PediaPhon bookmarklet into your browser menubar. this Pediaphon bookmarklet makes it easy to select text, than click the pediaphon button in the menubar and ... hear what you have selected. So what I did was enter the text of my 'introduction to mLearning' wikipage (which is a public and open wikipage), download the mp3 and than added that mp3 to the wikipage, enabling people who prefer audio to listen to what is written there. The result of the converted audiofile (mp3) can be found here on the page.

2. In addition to this secure, private learning environment, there is always the option of adding other, more socialmedia driven learning locations, based on the preference of the learners themselves (including what they like to let them create content in a way they like it). For instance: build a central movie repository, for instance via a Facebook group or similar where learners can share their own experiences easily (well, taken the word easily with some salt as what is easy for one person can have enormous complexity for someone else. These social media locations can be embedded via widgets in a secure wiki (to be done by the instructional designer, or technical helper: Once it is set up, new additions to these locations will automatically show up in the central learning environment). Depending on the type of learning you have in mind, you can use different social media. Here is a list of learning aims linked to the most common social media groups.

3. I also added some subtitles to movies using Camtasia and its subtitle options, but I must say that is very time consuming. I could not get very far with the YouTube option that adds subtitles automatically, as I have a non-English accent while speaking ... this dialect affects the YouTube results immensely :-) But I have not tried giving a transcript to YouTube and than see what happens. Might work better, so is on my to-do list.

And I also found a nice short publication (with cartoons) that describes strategic mobile options for learners with disabilities or challenges: called the “The 99 tools from the magical pocket of Aki-chan” .

To end this post, I gladly refer to a slideshare by E.A. Draffan who is working at Uni of Southhampton and has years of experience in this area. Her slideshare covers a lot of tools that can help students/learners with learning challenges.

Inclusive teaching using technology and the internet from E.A. Draffan

Read More

New colleague shows #Twitter for #academics and #researchers report

Getting in contact with new colleagues is always inspirational. Ildikó Bokros is one of such knowledge rich colleagues. She has pointed me towards a 11-page Twitter overview sheet which lists the twitter advantages for academics. The twitter report is fresh in lay-out, to the point and written by Amy Mollett, Danielle Moran and Patrick Dunleavy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The report is very useful if you want to get people in your institute oriented on the potential of Twitter, but also to get them started: setting up a twitter account, useful twitter terminology, tweeting styles, how to build a relevant network of followers, ... nice, short and to-the-point.

You can find the twitter for academics report here.

Read More

Does #mobile learning really make a difference in this world?

Years ago I met Devaji Patil in Bangalore, India and … I related to his spirit and wisdom. Devaji is a philosopher at heart and a medical doctor by profession. In his new job he wants to set up mobile health projects, but at the same time he wants to make sure they will be durable and basically… make sense to the people it is designed to help. So he challenged me with some tough questions comprising ethics, meaningfulness, gender challenges and effectiveness of learning with mobiles. I could get some thoughts in, but I feel many more people are needed to answer his questions in full, so feel free to add ideas or send Devaji additional answers.

1. how are we sure that mobile learning is really empowering

For ages people, both philosophers and lay-people, have been discussing the empowerment of learning or education in general. Looking at the Millennium goals, I can see that most of us still believe in it, but even the most basic primary education is not reached yet. I think this is due to lack of durable, educational vision. Any learning, including mLearning will only be empowering if it is made accessible to all, inspiring, comprehensible, participative as well as collaborative, with guidance for those learners that feel the need to have a guide-on-the-side and most of all durable within a flexible learning environment. Looking at teachers that are real corner stones of education, they know how to appeal to their learners, lift their spirits, inspire them to reach their full potential. That type of teacher is creative, knows how to reach his/her learners and find the strength within the learner. This being said, I feel that every learning is based on inspirational, creative people with vision and trust in the future of their learners. As such I am sure Devaji that if you set up mLearning courses, they will be empowering.  

2. how to actually negotiate the barrier of technology to an 'illiterate' health worker?

The best way to negotiate the barrier is by using what they use, or trying to reimagine new technology with how they use old or known technology. It is not necessary to read if you have a phone, in that case speech can be enough to exchange knowledge/information. So basic cell-phones can be used as help-lines, where patients phone in, and health workers phone back.

If the spoken feedback of the health care workers are than added to a data-base after ‘speech to text’ software, this database can be used for future cases. At the same time radio transmissions offer a great, non-reading, durable way of getting knowledge (continued medical education) distributed to large crowds in a less expensive way, and radio is a mobile device. A case study using radio for this reason (in Philippines for rural farmer women) is linked here (http://www.tistr.or.th/RAP/publication/1999/1999_08_rome.pdf). What strikes me is that funding is much more difficult to get for this type of proven, mobile learning than small scale smartphone projects (but that is another discussion).

3. with rapidly changing technology ... what is happening to pedagogy? Does pedagogy change too ? As fast as technology ?

Good pedagogy stands apart from technology, but technology can be used to get good pedagogy out to the masses and via distance education (reaching the difficult to reach, in every sense of the word). I feel that pedagogy is very human, and as humans only change slowly, good pedagogy will also only adapt to the pace in which humans can reach their own bigger potential. However with the evolution of technology, the variety of teaching/learning that can be reached via distance education does evolve more rapidly than before: which means that more people can be reached based on the same concepts of good pedagogy (e.g. participation between rural health care workers is now possible by using simple cell-phones).

4. Are we in a position to make 'learning' a central theme of Health systems strengthening if we are then where is it being seen if not why not ?

The knowledge and application of durable and scalable mLearning is still in its early beginnings. In just a couple of years’ time mLearning starts to take off. This means that a lot of projects did not take off due to lack of knowledge about all the factors impacting a project or target population, other projects do take off but are sometimes stopped due to non-durable options… And sadly those projects not attaining what they were meant to obtain are rarely disseminated, although most of us are eager to learn from mistakes to ensure successful future endeavors.

To me learning or training should be at the center of any system, including health systems. The concept of Lifelong Learning did not come out of the blue, but came out of an awareness that constant education will be a must in a world where changes happen increasingly rapid.  

A stable, durable health system will have learning and specifically continued medical education embedded in its core, for without keeping health care workers, health managers… up to date on latest changes, the patients will not be reached with optimal health care. In relation to this, I share this National Health Service (United Kingdom) paper focusing on 29 recommendations for embedding mLearning in their health care system http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.be/2011/04/how-can-health-within-clinics-be.htmlthese recommendations do not always apply to more challenged regions, but some of them can indeed be implemented.

5 Why is human interface still important. ?

For trust, real understanding, and for reaching those that need some time to voice the problems they are facing, and to reach those that feel insecure or unable to share text.

6. How to / Why / Where/ When to place technology enhanced learning in health systems that are not just weak ... but actually in a disintegrated state?

That is something else, if a system is in a disintegrated state it needs to be rebuild from the ground up I guess. In that case technology might be used to start communicating about most urgent issues but … if a basis is unstable, you can be sure that any rapidly designed technological addition will only amount to even more disruption.

7. Is technology gender sensitive ?Technology is definitely gender sensitive. It has the old stigma (male’s are better at it), the new social-economic realities (women have less access to technology) and the gender digital divide. There are exceptions, but it is an uphill battle to get women on an equal opportunity base regarding technology or its related solutions. To that topic I refer to GSMA’s woman mobile initiative: http://www.mwomen.org   

These types of subjects will be covered and discussed during MobiMOOC in week 2 by John Traxler and week 3 by Michael Sean Gallagher, so feel free to join the discussions. Looking at the participants I am sure they will be able to add much more solutions and ideas than I can. 

Read More

Win 500 $ with your mobile project overview for #mLearning

The free online course on mobile learning MobiMOOC will launch on 8 September 2012 and guide you through different mobile learning (mLearning) fields for three weeks. At the end of the three week course the MobiMOOC Award will be offered to the winning mLearning project, as voted by the MobiMOOC participants. The winning mLearning project will be that project which is considered by all as having the most impact for people living in difficult or challenged situations. Want to learn more about the course, than look at the course wiki here.

In order to enter the contest and to win the MobiMOOC Award, you must participate in MobiMOOC (it is a free course, open to all). If you have not registered for the course yet, you can enroll for free by becoming a member of the MobiMOOC Google group which can be found here.

The contest will be based on mLearning project overviews, that will be made based on a 10 step template that can be found here. If you already have an idea for a mobile project or you feel an idea will come soon, get a head start and take a look at the template to start brainstorming.

Which are the topics covered by MobiMOOC (all facilitated by mLearning experts):


First week: 8 – 15 September 2012
mLearning intro and planning (facilitated by Ignatia Inge de Waard - Belgium - @ignatia )

Second week: 16 – 22 September 2012
Mobile Learning Curriculum Framework (facilitated by Adele Botha - South Africa - @adele_b )
Global issues mLearning (facilitated by John Traxler - United Kingdom and the globe - @johntraxler )
mLearning tools (a collaborative experience by all of us MobiMOOC participants, each one of us will share their top tools, benefits of these tools and experiences)

Third week: 23 – 29 September 2012
Mobile Games (facilitated by David Parsons, New Zealand)
Augmented Reality mLearning (facilitated by Victor Alvarez, Spain)
Pedagogical theory, status of mLearning research (facilitated by Geoff Stead, Cambridge, UK)
ICT4D (facilitated by Michael Sean Gallagher - Korea / United Kingdom - @mseangallagher )
Train the trainer (facilitated by Jacqueline Batchelor, South Africa)
Corporate mLearning (facilitated by Amit Garg, India)
Mobile devices for activism (facilitated by Sean Abajian, California, US)
Mobile health or mHealth (facilitated by Malcolm Lewis, Australia)

30 September 2012: Award notification! The winner of the MobiMOOC award will be revealed.
Every MobiMOOC participant willing to enter the MobiMOOC award contest will be asked to send their overview by 25 September. From 28 September 2012 the vote will be open and on 30 September the winner will be revealed.

Read More