Category: TELCO

When I returned to work the following week after attending this event, the first thing I said to my boss was he’d just spent the best £30 on me this year.  It was a day packed full of really useful information, especially for a novice like me. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Wikipedia regular, as in I use it a lot for quick and easy information gathering, but my Wikipedia adventure stopped there, until today. 

For a start, I have never thought about how it could be used in education, except for quick reference. until this Summit.  I feel like a brand new world has been opened to me, so I am going to try and capture what I have learnt so I can refer back in the future and I hope you might find something interesting from my review of the day.

The day began with an intro + keynote with Ricahrd Nevell from Wikimedia UK giving us a few facts that we might all take for granted including the most important fact of all:

Wikipedia is to be used as a resource not a reference! 

I think everyone was secretly nodding their heads when Richard was saying how Wikipedia was a taboo subject for any student back in the days; you just simply wouldn’t dare to mention you have looked up a book or an author or anything from Wikipedia.  You simply would not admit it. In recent years, however, it is perfectly acceptable to research using Wikipedia, in fact, it is a very useful resource to sign post you to more in depth research. Who has time to read a whole book only to find out it’s not something you need?  Well, Wikipedia can more than help with this. It is also pretty common for tutors to recommend using Wikipedia as a starting point for any kinds of research, I remember when I was doing my MA back in 2013, my tutor told me don’t bother reading a book that she highly recommends, just read what’s been written about it on Wikipedia and go from there.  My true reaction at the time was, “Are you for real?”, but it turns out it was some of the best advice I got from doing my MA. Let’s move on and speak no more about my MA, shall we?

So the intro keynote was by Professor Alison Littlejohn from the UCL Knowledge Lab, she has introduced me to a new thing that people do – Editathon.  What? What is it that? You edit while you run? In order to cover my ignorance, I took out my phone and quickly looked it up on Wikipedia. Of course I did!  Oh right, it is an scheduled event where a bunch of people collectively (online and in person) edit the same topic on Wiki. Now it makes sense, but why do it, you ask?  I asked the same question myself.

The answer is simple, to collectively improve each other’s understanding of the same topic and to work collaboratively toward a common goal.  Perhaps most importantly, to understand how to work on a Wiki page, which I have learned today, can have many benefits that directly relate to digital learning.

Professor Littlejohn also said that, according to the BBC Blueroom, young people are more used to, more engaged to produce online content than consume.  I have never thought about it this way, but looking at my own experience when working with students, a lot of students seem to have a mental block with using a lot of online tools that are branded as ‘educational’.  Meanwhile, they have no problem simultaneously updating their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (if they still use it) when chatting with their mates on Snapchat and Whatsapp AND half listening to me trying to show them how to use an online learning tool.  Fact!

What does this mean to us?  I think it means students have all got very capable skills and some ‘hidden experience’ with improving their digital capability.  The challenge here is use something that can engage them and perhaps something that we actually use in the real world.

This brings me to the first presentation of the day from Caroline Ball from University of Derby; Caroline is a Academic Librarian who is also Wikipedia ninja, so she ran a term long module of how to edit a Wiki page, she described this as teaching Digital Capabilities by stealth.  When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense, in order to know how to edit a Wiki page and have your writing published online, you need to know how to conduct your research, how to cite your sources right and how to publish your writing online and how to deal with feedback and criticism. 

All in all, you have to be digitally capable to a point.

The more she described about her bespoke Wiki module at Derby, the more I have our very own DCAF repeating in my head, both aim to improve students’ digital capabilities, wouldn’t it be nice if we could find a way to marry the two?  Right, boss, are you reading this? Can we introduce something like “When DCAF meet Wiki”?

The more I listened to Caroline describing how her students all have their confidence increased, the more I think some Wiki related activities would be very useful to fulfil some of the attributes outlined on the DCAF.  For example, all of Caroline’s students have had their confidence increased with dealing with online research, editing their writing to be published online, dealing with feedback from peers reviews such as criticism and possible online trolling.  Ain’t these some of the attributes from our very own DCAF? Doesn’t what Caroline does answer the same question I am always asked when trying to promote our DCAF? Which is the DCAF is good at identifying which areas of digital capabilities our students need to work on, but how?  Start a Wiki page on their favourite artist ot designer?

Another example is Charles from Sheffield, he is a historian and a senior lecturer.  Not once, but twice he made his students research a particular medieval history topic using Wikipedia resources only.  The purpose of these exercises were not necessarily about understanding the particular history topic, but instead his students needed to research further on the information they have learnt from the Wiki pages and then write about it, they needed to decide how accurate the info is from the Wiki pages.  I think it is a very clear idea that really does kill 2 birds with 1 stone. 

There are so many great lightning talks and I have a lot more to say, so I suggest if anyone is interested, get in touch and we can discuss further.  I’ll buy coffee if you bring cookies!

In the afternoon, I experienced my first un-conference – What a great thing?  It felt like a nice afternoon out with loads of good friends with common interests, but in reality, I have only known them for 5 minutes.

In one of the un-conference sessions, we talked about what digital skills a Wiki editor needs.  The answer is more than you think but less than you expect. One would have to be comfortable with using a computer, a mouse and a keyboard, which is something that everyone who attended this summit takes for granted.  In my experience, however, our students are not always comfortable with doing some basic tasks on a computer. Again, teaching them how to edit a Wiki page on a topic that can interest them seems a good idea to not only help them increase their online confidence, but also help them feel more comfortable with using a computer – A skill that, rightly or wrongly, is necessary in most if not all workplaces.

In Wales, they have made Wikipedia a part of the curriculum in secondary school and Coventry University is due to start their very own Wikipedia module.  There are also other universities in the US that have some forms of Wikipedia modules. Someone even asked if we would one day have a Wikipedia degree, it is certainly something that would interest some people, but perhaps not for everyone.  The point here is that it really does seem Wikipedia is a great little something that could tick a lot of the crucial boxes out students need to take if they are to do well in the digital world.

I am certainly going to be asking to be more involved in any Wikipedia projects we might have up our sleeves. I hope one day someone else will be writing about our Wikipedia success story.

If you want to discuss anything Wiki related, I am currently still on fire from the summit, please do get in touch!

Reference:

Teaching and Learning Exchange (2017), Digital Creative Attributes Handbook.  London:  University of the Arts London.

It’s been a few years now since I had the Bett show on my “I must go this year” list, but I never quite managed to find the time to go, until this year, I finally had my first Bett experience and it was quite an exhausting one, both physically and mentally.  In a good way I must state!

There was certainly a lot to see, the reason why the same ticket, which was free by the way, allowed admission for the whole 4 days.  If I was kitting up a department or a school with a bottomless budget, then I would have most definitely found my heavens. 

Having said that, I also felt a strong sense of despair as I was heading home.  Like any other trade show, the big International companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe, BenQ, Lenovo and just about any and every big name you could think of, all got their prime spots with an army of staff trying to convince you they are the best hardware and software you and your students absolutely couldn’t do without.  Well, but I knew that already! Or rather we are made to acknowledge it:

At UAL, we are a Microsoft house with an enterprise Adobe licence for all staff, a free Autodesk licence for all and we mostly use Apple Mac.  We use this stuff and they rarely go wrong (There is a huge difference between this and they are good!), so our students follow suit. End of story!  So what was the point of people like me going to a show like Bett? I did wonder that for a good couple of hours, there was nothing in the show that I couldn’t learn or play with at Oxford Street and on the Internet… Until I decided to ignore the big boys and go explore the smaller and completely unattractive little stands, that was when my eyes lit up!  I found my heaven!

There were loads of small brands and developers with really interesting stuff, with my own passion and belief that assistive technology can truly benefit any and all students, I went on an assistive technology treasure hunt. Oh my GOD!  How behind is my knowledge! I was ashamed. So here are some things that I discovered:

I had a good play on some directional headphones that block out the surrounding sound to help students to concentrate in lectures.  I had a chat with some ladies selling some eye tracking software that analyses how children with and without learning difficulties read, though I didn’t understand half the things they were telling me, but it didn’t matter a bit, it sounded awesome if a bit scary.  I tried some VR experiences on how learning and playing can truly be the same thing. There is nothing wrong with learning through play, is there? Even the emphasis is on play?

Most importantly, I got myself a free text to speech / speech to text all in one licence when I couldn’t decide whether or not to renew my own text to speech licence and speech to text licence at home that have cost me a fortune.  It wasn’t just the free license that excited me, it was also the fact that finally, someone has combined these two bits of technologies into a single thing. Finally!

The Bett is full of little gems if you are willing to spend the time to talk to the real people who actually believe in what they are selling.

Aside from discovering new products, I also targeted a couple of talks, which I found quite interesting.

Bearing in mind we are trying to encourage more uptake with using Microsoft Teams as a communication tool at LCC, I went to a case study talk by Newcastle University to see how they have been using Teams not only as an instant messaging tool, but also as a collaboration / group project tool.  It was really interesting to see how they have managed to encourage their course teams and students to use Teams exclusively for almost every aspect of their projects from initial discussions to file sharing and peer reviews all the way to post project feedback analysis. According to their data, 68% of their students have used Teams throughout their group projects and as much as 78% of their students would have used it on all of their projects if they had known about it from day 1.  Not a bad result for the new kid (Teams) on the block, isn’t it!

This talk has helped me to see Teams in a totally different light.  It has also helped me start imagining how we might be able to develop the use of Teams as a multi purpose project tool in gearing up our students for the industry. 

Overall, it was an interesting afternoon spent, but would I go back there again next year in a hurry?  Perhaps not, I think a lot of the new products I saw, I could have seen in shops or discovered online. The talks that I went to and could have gone to, could all be attended online through various channels.  I am a glass half empty kind of a person, so shows like this would have to have much better USPs to make me feel truly excited about.