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doug woods

ICT in Education Consultant and Trainer

Archive for the ‘Handheld Learning’ Category

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Handheld Learning Conference 2009

Friday, June 25th, 2010

136307935 0a3e869412 m Handheld Learning Conference 2009In an early post, http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/handheld-learning/ I mentioned that I was attending the 2009 Handheld Learning Conference in London. I also mentioned that I was looking for four things;

  • the chance to see new ideas and innovations
  • opportunities to meet with people using technology in interesting and successful ways
  • information to assess the future potential of handheld devices in education
  • some fun, well why not!

    • So how did the conference measure up and did I meet my four goals?

    Let me start by saying that this was one of themost interesting conferences I have been to in the field of education. It was spread over 3 days; the first day being taken up by a Handheld Festival showcasing some of the work people and schools have been doing. For me, the best part of the day was the Learners Y factor session hosted by Jason Bradbury, he of the Gadget Show fame and also dot Robot (which sadly we didn’t get to see). This session showcased the work of several schools in using handheld technologies and was presented by the pupils themselves. It would be true to say that each of the schools were interesting and inspiring in what they demonstrated.

    Earlier on the Monday, I had the priviledge of listening to a presentation given by Dawn Hallybone about her work using Nintendo handhelds and Wii devices. Dawn is well known for her work and rightly so for she has done some fantastic work using handheld devices in education. I however was particularly interestedwhen she mentioned some new work in the pipeline using the Wii with dyspraxic learners.

    I attended only part of the session organised by Mirandanet. The problem was that there were so many sessions running in parallel, that it was impossible to attend to all the sessions I wanted to. This was a fascinating sesion and it is a shame that I missed the drawing up of the mind-map but was able to listen in to the discussion afterwards. Thankfully the mind-map has been posted on the web and should be found by following the above link. There was one aspect of the discussion afterwards which was perhaps more depressing than anything; there was a small group of student teachers who were saying that their exposure to ICT in their teacher training was very limited andd, they felt, did not fully prepare them for teaching modern learners.

    Sessions clashing and missing speakers I would have liked to see, was a factor on the second day. I managed to attend an inspiring session by Ollie Bray , who has posted his presentation online, but this meant, unfortunately, that I had to miss a fascinating session by John Davitt. I also missed Tim Ryland’s sesion, which was a great shame. I was, however, able to catch the session from Tony Vincent, whose session came at the end of the day and after a few poorly presented sessions. Which is a great shame for I feel that many more could have benefited from his session.

    The final day, Wednesday, was a packed day with 3 strands and various breakout sessions planned. The highlight of the day was probably the final speech by Ray Kurzweil at the end of the conference. He is an influential thinker, who I had only come across before as a result of his work in speech synthesis and recognition. His work, though goes a lot deeper and this session he chose to focus upon his work into the exponential development of technology. This work, I feel has a major importance for those of us in educational ICT. We often complaiabout how slow the world of educationchanges whereas the world of ICT changes rapidly, well Kurzweil’s work suggests that the ICT world will continue to change even more rapidly as it changes exponentially, rather than linearly. So in the future can we expect to see more of a gap between the technology and the pedagogy?

    So did the conference help me achieve the four goals I set out before attending? I would say it did. I certainly had many opprotunities to see some new ideas and also to meet people. I certainly also got a lot of information bout how handheld technologies might be used in future education but any assessment of this will have to wait for a while! and was there any fun? yep!

    As an addendum to this post. I am am planning to attend the 2010 Games Based learning conference in London. Hopefully, this will further develop my enthusiasm for handheld devices in education and also allow me to discover ways in which computer games can be used to support learning.

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    Put your iPad on Your Desk

    Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

    I don’t have an iPad

    Steve Jobs while presenting the iPad in San Fr...

    Image via Wikipedia

    But I have seen people using them and the first thing that strikes me is just how awkward and cumbersome they seem to be.

    I daresay that when people first used a mobile phone or a video camera, they may have felt that it was cumbersome but soon got used to it. The iPad is slightly different, though, because it seems cumbersome and awkward when you finish using it.

    Just what do you do with it when you’ve finished using it? Yes, I know, some of you have probably not got to that stage as you’ve been using it constantly, like a junkie, since you first got it and others will respond that the time to finish using it is when the battery needs recharging!

    Seriously, though, unlike the iPod Touch which you can switch off and slip back into your pocket, the iPad is not so easy. I have seen some slip it into their laptop bag or into a briefcase. I guess many at home or at work may just put it down on a table or desk. I have even seen some who carry it around in their hand or even hold it in place under their arm or elbow; which doesn’t seem a very secure place to hold an expensive piece of technology.

    Seeing this, my mind began to wander as to how the iPad might be used in schools. We couldn’t expect schoolchildren to carry their iPad under their arm or walk around with them in their hand all day. I guess they might keep them in their school bag or a satchel … (waits for fashion police to come and arrest him for suggesting people should go back to having satchels) … or would a teacher simply say ‘ right, children,’  (it’s a primary school!) ‘ put your iPads on your desk and look at me.’ ?

    Put your iPad on your desk …

    now that seems to conjure up new possibilities. With just one iPad face up on a desk or table (I’m referring to desks in deference to present government thinking!), you can have 1, 2 or up to 4 pupils working together with the one device. This is something that perhaps was not so easy with desktop computers, laptops, netbooks or even the iPod Touch (owing to its smaller screen). We could now have a small number of pupils working cooperatively together via the single device, the iPad.

    I wonder, could the iPad bring about a re-emergence of board games? I know, we’ve all seen Scrabble (r) and Monopoly (r) software but, let’s be honest, they’re not quite the same when you’re playing by yourself or against the machine. Maybe, the format of the iPad could add an extra dimension to interactive boardgames?

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    John Davitt speaks

    Monday, May 17th, 2010

    2260927228 07c4ec3ea1 m John Davitt speaks

    It’s always a pleasure to watch John Davitt giving his presentation. Unfortunately I missed it at this year’s Handheld Learning Conference, so it was great to see the video made available on the web.

    You can find more videos of the handheld learning conference here

    May 2010 update.

    I’ve heard John speak a few times now and each time I seem to find something new in what he says. This is partly why I recommend anyone to go listen to him.

    Below, I have listed some of the things I have got from John’s presentations. I daresay there are more I could have got and I guess other people may have got a different interpretation or message from John’s presentations, nevertheless, here is what I have got so far…

    We should be using technology more creatively … no, I’ll rephrase that, we need to allow and support learners to use technology more creatively. For so long, pupils have been passive consumers (I think he actually uses that phrase) of technology, we ned to move them on to becoming creative uses of the tech. Instead of just sitting down in front of a monitor, pupils can be allowed to use a wide range ofd devices to create their own digital material and resources.

    There are so many ways in which a pupil can demonstarte their work and their learning, so why, when we use technology, do we demand they use only a few? If you think about it, technology in the classroom has been very much a ‘visual’ tool, even when we consider Audio Visual or Multimedia aspects it seems that the Visual aspect dominates. Learners employ different senses and different styles of learning, even traditional teaching was not just visual, so we need to use technology in much more creative ways to reach out and support the different learning styles of  individuals.

    We’re each different. Some of us like our toast nicely buttered with the butter evenly spread across the slice and into each corner ( I had a girlfriend like that once, it nearly drove me mad; not her obsession with having the butter evenly spread but the fact that she was still around at breakfast time!). In the past, computers might have been seen as the preserve of neat and tidy people who liked organising databases, populating spreadsheets, or producing nicely word-processed documents. Nowadays, technology should be in the hands of everybody, not just the neat and tid, organised people. Being neat and organised, despite what your mother or your employer might think, is not a positive attribute; it is simply a personal characteristic and does not make you a better person that someone less organised or untidy.

    Then there’s the story John tells about the Banda machine ( a primitive copier that used an analogue method of turning a handle to produce copies, for those of you too young to recall such a device) and how this one person had charge of the machine. It took me a while to realise any significance in this story but I do recall how in the early days, computers were seen as the territory of the IT co-ordinator in a school and no-one else was allowed to touch them without his permission or without prior signing of a book to say that you had it and signing again to say you had returned it. Nowadays, such  petty empire building is not acceptable, all teachers now should have easy and ready access to technology for their lessons. In fact, we have gone much further than that, no longer should all teachers have access to technology for the lesson but all pupils should have access to, and that access should be available whereever the pupil is and wherever the learning takes place.

    Okay, I’ll stop there but there is much more to be gained from listening to John Davitt or reading his book or following him on twitter. So do so!

    As I right this, John is apparently on a beach somewhere, not sunning himself like any normal person would but running a training course!

    Deve (Camel)

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