Since we started playing around with Create-a-Scape at Sheffield East CLC, I’ve got a geeky thrill at the possibilities afforded by augmented reality. It combines 2 areas of interest for me; spatial awareness (or spatial literacy) and mobile technology. There’s something quite exciting about adding layers of meaning and interaction onto the real world to get people interacting with it and each other. Create-a-Scape was great but an idea ahead of its time. We never really found a mobile device that would host it reliably and the amount of time and effort we had to expend on getting it to work was immense. I remember one geography teacher in Sheffield who was desperate to try it but threw in the towel after the frustrations reached critical mass – a real disappointment for him and us.

Finally, though the technology is emerging into the light. It’s still early days though. I’ve been having a bit of a play with a number of apps for the iPhone;

• Junaio,
• Wikitude and
• Layar (in conjunction with the Hoppala developers’ tool).

They all provide a similar function – point the camera in different directions and you see icons attached to real world locations: points of interest or POIs. These can be clicked to link to web pages or media. This information can be viewed by channel so you can separate information according to theme (e.g. culture, architecture, shopping etc). Junaio has more of a social approach where you can add your own locations fairly easily and share them with a network of friends, announcing them via Twitter.

Junaio in Action

The other apps are more delivery platforms with less scope for creating your own content but using Hoppala was a reasonably easy first step in creating my own Layar layers (although, not for the feint-hearted).

They are worth a play with but I think the next generation of AR is going to be a lot more interesting.

I found the current crop of apps quite clunky to use. The main issue was overload of information. In a location that has many POIs it can be difficult to read all the text on them and selecting the desired one for viewing.  I had to spend a bit of time trimming out channels on Wikitude as it assumed I wanted to find a hotel room (of which there seem to be lots in Newcastle!)- personalising the POI’s shown was a repetitive task.

The other factor is that it’s difficult to relate what you are seeing in AR to the real world in dimensions other than distance. Also,  distance is represented still isn’t intuitive. I can grasp that a particular landmark is south from my position and it might tell me it’s 500m away but actually navigating towards that point is tricky and requires checking a traditional  map display.

As such, tools like Google and Bing Maps still have the edge for me.

Also, the actual response time of the phone when pointing in different directions leads to a slight lag in the POIs catching up which got a bit frustrating.

Plus, you do look a bit of an idiot waving the phone around at eye level!

Of more interest is the development of visual search with apps like Google Goggles (not available on the iPhone yet.) With this you can point your phone at certain objects and it will identify it and search for information. Link that with location-aware capabilities and that provides a much more useful form of AR.

I’m also intrigued by apps like the Museum of London’s Streetmuseum. This overlays historical images of London over your live view, giving you a window on how locations looked through in the past. I’ve not had a chance to try it out in London yet but I’m looking forward to it. It would be great if this sort of thing incorporated audio as well as visuals (something which Create-a-Scape was designed to do). Have a look at History Pin for a non-mobile, beyond London version of this.

There’s the whole other area of AR tagging of objects using QR codes to add extra layers to things like text books and museum exhibits but that’s something I hope to have a look at later.

The growth in location aware stuff is really exciting (and not without risks). I think the opportunities for informal learning, participation and breaking out of institutional walls could offer real educational benefits. It will be interesting to look back on this in a year’s time to see how much has changed.

Have a read of Nick Shackleton-Jones’ vision of the near future.

CC Image - Brendan Wilkinson - A-NC-ND

I’m going all gooey about AudioBoo at the moment. It’s sat around in the perpiphery of my vision for a while now but in the last month or so I’ve started to see it as a really useful addition to my network of tools, especially now I’m a JesusPhone user.

If you’re not familiar with AudioBoo have a look at their site and check out the video intro.

Here’s why I’m gushing:

It’s simple – Using the iPhone you can go from recording to publishing in a matter of clicks. The audio record function allows you to pause during recording and append. It won’t allow you to chop your audio around in an Audacity stylee but adding too much functionality would get in the way of the simplicity. I can live with that.

It’s social – There aren’t as many people using AudioBoo as Twitter, for example, but it still has the same mechanisms for following and you can also comment on Boos bringing your network in on the act.

It’s fun – Sound is overlooked, I think, but still plays a massive part in our lives. I love the idea of taking sound snapshots and sharing them. Listening forces you to take things more slowly and experience the world differently.

It’s mobile – I’m surprised by the quality of the audio you get from recording on an iPhone (none of that compressed MP3 gurgle you get with many online audio recorders). The fact that it’s mobile means that you can record your thoughts regardless of location and allows you to easily bring in other sounds and voices where hulking round large amounts of equipment or dragging someone near a laptop aren’t feasible. I find it really useful for reflecting on conferences or other events where I’m likely to be on the move or in a hotel room immediately after. The iPhoen’s great but trying to type an extended blog post on it would make me want to cry. It also helps you to capture serendipitous bits of discovery or random thought in awkward places bringing informal and formal learning together.

It’s personal – Hearing someone’s voice, especially when they’re speaking conversationally and not off a script is a great way of feeling your getting closer to someone. It gives you more clues about emotion and personality than you would get from written text.

It’s spatial – As a failed geographer I still love the idea of landscape and space and I’ve done work with schools before where students have captured sounds in a location and then mashed them together in Audacity to create soundscapes. AudioBoo geotags your recordings but it will also let you export your recordings as mp3 for use elsewhere (see handy tip)

It’s connected – Boos are public, sharable, embeddable and you can link to other apps like Twitter, Facebook to get your recordings out to your network quickly and easily. Adding a hashtag into an AudioBoo title when you’re linked to Twitter automatically hastags the Tweet which saves retweeting later.

Oh, yes. It’s free!

As a learning tool it’s something powerful to include in the arsenal for capturing formal and informal experiences and introducing a sense of play into things.n I’m going to be investigating more about the possible applications of digital storytelling in FE and HE soon and AudioBoo is likely to figure quite prominently.

You can listen to my Boos here. Also check out Doug Belshaw’s Thinking Digital conference chats here.

Right, I’m off to run through a sunny cornfield hand in hand with AudioBoo while recording the pretty birdsong.

The view from NCSL, Nottingham

Last week I attended the Centre for Recording Achievement’s seminar on Personal Development Planning (PDP) and ePortfolios. It was at the National College for School Leadership in Nottingham (fanTASTic venue, btw). In the spirit of reflective learning here’s what I took away from the event.

When I started with Netskills a few weeks back with a remit to look at ePortfolios I was a little puzzled, seeing them as something of a side issue to the big VLE “dead or alive” debate. I’ve come to the conclusion they are actually more important than VLE’s from a learning perspective.

(Actually, let me clarify. ePortflios as technical tools aren’t that important. It’s the process of PDP that’s really interesting.)

Implicit in the case study presentations and explicit in the keynotes was how much the skills involved in PDP were central to being an effective learner and ultimately and effective employee. This came from academics, students and employer representatives at the event.

The ability to set goals, self-manage development, present information and crucially, to actively reflect on learning are key differentiators in a world where a good degree no longer guarantees a good job.

Such was the importance put on PDP skills at the event I had to keep reminding myself that subject knowledge is also a pretty important part of university education. Having said that, though, with the speed of information change you could argue where the balance lies (although I won’t try that here!).

There were a number of issues for me (not necessarily the key themes of the event):

Technology - This was an event about pedagogy and process so there wasn’t much discussion of the actual technology involved in which I felt was a good thing. There are some very good tools available for running ePortfolios but I’ve yet to come across one that I’m excited by as a learner. Any large scale product is going to suffer a bit in that it can’t do everything for everyone and ends up a little clunky and frustrating. There seems to be some interesting work on using social networking tools as a basis for reflective learning. I appreciated Sarah Chesney’s (University of Cumbria) concept of separating the PLS (Personal Learning System – a series of tools and systems) from the ePortfolio (the eventual outcome).

Culture - Change is difficult, either at personal or institutional level and there were plenty of examples of the challenges of overcoming barriers. One that stuck with me was to do with younger students not having an adequate vocabulary to express their reflections which I’m going to do a separate post on shortly. I’m really interested in the transition from Secondary to Higher Education from this perspective.

Culture 2 – Are people generally open to sharing their learning? One case study we saw (Sarah Chesney again) looked at using blogging as a tool for staff development. Initially, the trial participants kept reflective blogs private but over time, as they became more comfortable with it, wanted to share their posts. Even so, this sharing only extended to the trial coordinator and not to the other participants. This made me wonder about what other experiences people have had encouraging learners to share. Does that fact that being a learner can make people feel vulnerable in a professional context create a sticking point for some.

Merging formal and informal learning - One of the greatest strengths of ePortfolios, in my view. I wish I could remember who it was on Twitter (@mattlingard?) introduced me to the phrase “life-wide learning”  but I think it’s a more powerful concept that life-long learning. Life-long learning is only sustainable if it incorporates as wide a range of experiences as possible.

There was also a perplexing/inspiring/baffling keynote from Swedish mathematician Ambjörn Naeve that encompassed Semantic Web, Communities of Practice, “double-loop learning” and “carrot rape” (no, really). That’s going to take a bit more processing so I’ll post about that later.

Oh, this was my AudioBoo that I recorded shortly after the event…

John "K" (by-nc-nd)

I really like the people I follow on Twitter. They generate a real buzz of excitement about stuff that is happening that I find very energising.

The thing that gets the Tweeps I follow particularly excited is novelty. When a new idea, device, article appears that challenges a widely held preconception Tweetdeck just lights up as the thoughts bounce around like popcorn.

It’s a fairly trivial example but take the arrival of the 11th Dr Who last week (Matt Smith, brilliant BTW!). Science fiction is not a common topic amongst the people I follow but there was a certain amount of glee (common noun) about the arrival and “post-match” analysis.

I think this whole issue of novelty is important. Articles like this one suggest a strong link between novelty and learning so it’s not just about “oooh, look at the shiny!”

I loved working with kids for the moments when you show them something or they discover something for themselves and you can really feel the buzz as they get stuck in. I think that the people that make the best, most inspirational teachers are the ones who tap into this yearning for novelty and exploit it mercilessly.

There are many complaints that the world of technology never stands still. Devices become obsolete in a matter of months and sites like Bebo go from the peak of popularity to the dead pool in what seems like the blink of an eye. It’s actually what makes technology such a thrilling thing to follow. Educators need to develop different skills to manage these changes but if we expect our students to be able to adapt to a changing economy and society, the least we could do is follow suit.

Two of my new colleagues, Will and Steve, introduced me to the term digital fluency the other day as a way of describing the ability to keep up with a fluid tech-verse. It’s a topic I want to come back to in the future.

So, what I’m saying is that all the people that I follow on Twitter are Novelty Junkies. I suspect it’s not the technology itself that attracts most of these tweeps but the constant arrival of  new resources, devices, news and innovation.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I’m writing this a few days later after following @daveowhite’s keynote at the Plymouth Elearning Conference. There have been one or two tweets about how the idea of “perpetual beta” is accepeted by “players” (people deeply involved in examining new technologies) but anathema to “pragmatists” (people who are interested mostly in implementing tech to help them perform a function – not bothered by exploring). I find the idea of a world in perpetual beta quite liberating – nothing is ever quite finished, everything is in a constant state of renewal and flux and the community and conversation are part of the development. I don’t think I mean just with technology either; ideas, learning, relationships, art, architecture, music etc etc.

Flickr Image - Sean Dreilinger

An interesting juxtaposition of consecutive articles from BECTA recently. The first questions the effectiveness of those “Brain Training ” games that some people including allegedly Nicole Kidman go doolally over, saying that in one study  there was no significant improvement in performance in areas like memory tests compared to control groups. Given that the sample size was tiny  it’s not going to light a fire under the debate but interesting nonetheless.

The second article on the other hand trumpets the value of gaming in enhancing certain skills. Many games require the development of strategies, problem-solving and increasingly creativity (see games like Spore) plus they are fun.

I did a wee post a while back about using commercial gaming releases as an opportunity for informal learning and this kind of bears that out but it’s most interesting that the games specifically written to enhance learning (or to tap into that particular market) possibly aren’t actually that good at what they claim to do.

Links

Video Games Contribute to Development
The Effects of Brain Training Software and Games

I’m not being controversial to say that the ability to solve complex problems is much more valuable to a knowledge-based economy/society than knowing a list of facts. Plus it makes for a more fulfilling learning experience.

Now let me relate this to an office conversation we just had about gaming in eductaion.

I’m ambivalent about using games in education. We were part of trial a while back with Immersive Education, testing their new Mission Maker software. It allows children and teachers to create interactive 3d games to explore the method of game design, logical planning etc.

On the whole, a good piece of software but enthusiasm in our schools was not great so we didn’t continue withe the package.

Just too darn complicated for most cross-curricular purposes. 

The aim was also to use it to create learning materials but as an entertaining learning experience you would be competing with the likes of Halo, Quake, Half-Life and the like. The commercial stuff is just soooo far ahead of anything that could be produced for educational purposes in terms of gameplay, narrative and even learning experience (I’m coming on to this…). We did investigate a science game that was a mod (modification) of the Half-Life game. You’re naturally going to compare it to the quality of the original game and it doesn’t come out of it well. 

I think the real power in gaming in education comes from the opportunity for informal learning. You might want to argue that there’s not much educational merit in playing Fable 2 for 4 hours a night or the moot point whether you as a teacher should be encouraging playing violent video games. But there is usually some form of problem solving and strategic thinking involved parallel to blasting seven levels of crap out of zombies. Plus, your students will be playing them anyway!

The trick is to help students to tease out the learning from the experience, help them relate it to situations in the real world. Eventually this will help them grow into autonomous learners. 

And gaming is changing. Traditional shoot-em ups trace their lineage to a time when gamers were almost exclusively male teenagers. The demographic is much more balanced now so there are many more titles that require a larger portion of your brain to succeed.

Sims is a great example although a little retro now.

Spore has created a lot of buzz recently with it’s emphasis on biology, evolution and society.

If you want to go back even further in time check out what Tim Rylands at Chew Magna school has been doing, using the Myst series of interactive puzzlers to enhance children’s descriptive writing skills.

Call of Duty can give a way in to talking about the reality of WW2.

Or look at the Half-Life 2 series of games as a way of exploring dictatorship and oppression in society.

My own personal favourite, though is Portal, a dimension-bending problem solving, first person actioner. It doesn’t require you to kill anyone and it has the blackest sense of humour I’ve ever come across in a game.

If all else fails, try using Grand Theft Auto as a way of examining crime and morality.

In summary, don’t think about a top down approach where the school provides a learning resource and directs students to an outcome. Use what resources the students already have to explore the process of learning and meta-cognition.

PS Apologies if the links to the games sites are block by your ISP at school!