GEUG14 - 23rd - 24th June University of York 2014 - Google Apps for Education European User Group meeting

Ok so its a bit of a mouthful but I am looking forward to attending the GEUG 14 event.
I recently stumbled across it existence as I was looking for some information about Google Apps for education that I might be able to use for my MA in Online and Distance Education.

It should make for an interesting two days.

The first day has speakers discussing Living in  the Cloud - A Year with Google Apps. Case studies on connected learning with communities and Using Google apps for teaching and learning. At the very least I will be able to network and find out others experience of use GAFE in Higher Education in the UK.

The second day looks like it will focus on the Roadmap for where Google see Apps for Education going, I am looking forward to hearing about Google Classroom.



My main reason for going are:

To identify if and how other institutions are integrating it into their existing VLE's
Can GAFE enhance the student experience?
Trying to determine if it is possible to mobile technologies across a range of platforms and still have a parity of student experience.


So I hope to maybe see one or two people there, no doubt I will be clutching my chromebook.

For further information visit   http://geug14.york.ac.uk/
G+ GEUG14
Twitter @GEUG14

I will post up some information during and shortly after the event.

Brief thoughts on some Open Educational Resources.

Part of this weeks activities we have been asked to look at a range of OpenEducational Resources and compare them, identifying some of their similarities and differences and what we think of them.

As I am studying with the Open University I thought I would start with the Open Learn Courses in the UK provided by the Open University through the website and also via iTunes U.
http://www.open.edu/itunes/

The course I chose to look at was the "Design Behind the Bike" I chose this primarily because I am interested in cycling and interested in the history of it's design.  The website itself is relatively easy to navigate and I didn't have too much of a problem finding what I wanted and being able to sample a video whilst on the Open Learn site I felt was an accessible way into the short course. 

Playing more in iTunes is a painless experience, assuming you have an iTunes account. One issue that I take is that whilst iTunes is free and available for Mac and PC and iOS it locks out quite a large proportion of people who use alternative operating systems and mobile platforms. 

Until iTunes becomes a web based application this problem is likely to prevail which in my opinion is a shame. The resource themselves were well paced, clear and well produced and accessible (in this instance) to a broad audience. I appreciated the transcripts being there and can imagine this being particularly useful for other more complicated subjects. However as with quite a few of the Open University transcripts, PDFs are problematic as the format doesn't allow you to easily annotate then. An aspect that was missing from the Open Learn course was the testing or checking to determine if you were actually learning. It was great to watch and passively absorb information but I would like to have seen some checking of learning. 

I spent a little time with the Codeacademy - Learn to code MOOC
Having previously dabbled with this site it was immediate accessible and I think it has struck the right level of formality to the website, clean light and fun. It also stays away from the geek cliche of coding which is a definite positive. 

The site give positive encouragement and makes use of badges and incentive for doing well and working your way through the problems. I feel that the testing and then 'levelling up' aspect will appeal to a broad audience. Plugging into social networks also is a way to show your friends how well you are doing. This reminds me of the John Seeley Brown lecture where he spoke comment about Michigan University not having 40000 students but 250000 as the wider networks that the learners are connected to also benefit from (albeit broader context). It's good to see that since I first visited code academy the amount of courses has grown and appear to be flourishing.

Reading materials and Learning resources on the H800

The OU provides a broad and varied range of online resources for the H800: Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates as you can probably imagine. 

By default Chrome OS does not support epub (ereader files) or .mobi (kindle reader files) However I like the idea of being able to read all the files across my range of mobile devices. This is where epub files become really useful in my opinion. In order to keep things as simple and in the cloud as possible I have been looking at how to keep things Chrome so that I can move between different machines and devices but only have one copy of the files. 

So after a little research I found Readium, a chrome browser app. 

In Chrome OS you can upload the files to your Google Drive and then link directly to them. The reader itself is highly configurable as with most ereaders. I would highly recommend you check it out. 

Update - Readium do not support .mobi files unfortunately.

Chrome OS and first stumbling block.

So as part of my course I am supposed to log into OULive a collaborative discussion space that allows students and staff to have live chats. Great I thought! I bought myself a USB Headset clicked on the link and it downloaded a .jlnp (a Java Network Launch Protocol) file, double clicked on it and Chrome does not Support this file type.  So off I went digging for more information.

OU Live is essential Blackboard Collaborate a Java Based system that often required a launcher app. Chrome OS does not and is very unlikely to support Java in the future as it is pushing for the full adoption of the HTML 5 standard and other open standards.

So unfortunately for me I will have to use my Mac to drop in to the OU Live chat. It's a shame really as I wanted see if I could use open systems to undertake the course.

From an educational and open context what are my options. I could use the chat facility on Moodle, If students all had an Android tablet or the Chrome Web browser or Chrome OS on a chromebook or chromebox then Google Hangouts would be a possibility. It supports up to 9 people at a time and I would anticipate that 9 people talking would be more that enough for a group and would definitely need coordinating. Having chrome as a web browser usually means that you have a google ID/mail account as does having an Android phone/tablet so this may be a possibility.

Skype is multi-platform (except chrome OS) and works on Windows, Mac and Linux environments without too many problems.

If an institution is locked into a Mac or iOS platform then iMessage is a real strong alternative but it requires an Apple ID.

Facebook may and the video messaging may also be a viable solution.

I will log into my OU Live session next week and report back.

I'm going online..I may be sometime...

I have been thinking about this for sometime now and I have decided to take the plunge.

As my masters programme is all about Online and Distance Education I decided that I am going to practically investigate if I stay online and not rely on desktop based, Mac, PC or Linux based applications and try to live in the could as it were. At my place of work (Leeds College of Art) we use Moodle as our VLE, we call it eStudio to avoid any brand issues and we see it as a virtual extension of our actual studios (so e could be interpreted as electronic or extension, either way I don't mind). We use Google education apps for our student email and calendars which work well, however we haven't really pushed the rest of the cloud apps. Something I would like to pursue further.

So I have bought myself an Acer C720 Chromebook, got 100gb of free cloud drive space for two years and we shall see what happens....

The obligatory 'Hello World' post.

Well here it is 'Hello World'. The very first post on my new blog, hopefully this one will last slightly longer than some of my previous ones. 

The focus of this blog will primarily revolve around educational pedagogy and it the links with art and design practice. Hopefully it will explore some of the debates around how educators can use technology within their delivery within a creative studio environment. The bulk of the commentary and discussion will stem from my recent re-enrolment onto the Open University MA in Online and Distance Education. I enrolled on this course several years ago but life and children and moving house got in the way of everything, no regrets but far too many things to juggle. So I am back to studying for myself again and on the second year of three of my MA programme. 

Feel free to comment on any future posts.