A QR (quick response) code is a two dimensional bar code that can be read on a mobile device, such as a camera phone. Once the device decodes the information then it will enable an action to be undertaken. For instance, this might be accessing a web page, displaying text information or subscribing to an…
Read moreAuthor: Lawrie Phipps
Managing the Crowd
“Imagine an organisation where users are free to describe the content they create as they see fit. Where they help decide the retention and disposal of every record that they create or use, based on how useful and valuable they deem it to be. Where, based on a combination of their thoughts and actions, they…
Read moreReflecting on JIF08
This is a bit of an indulgence posting on my part, a few short reflections on the JISC Innovation Forum 2008. The sessions that I attended were excellent, and the diversity on show really made me think hard about what we do as the larger JISC Innovation Group. The really nice thing for me as…
Read moreEdupunk?
There’s a nice debate going on out there, this posting is just my own perspective and a signpost, if you want to engage more fully take a wander over to the funnymonkey posting and follow the trail. “Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom.” Looking at the wikipedia entry for punk it identifies a…
Read moreSolstice 2008 and Exit Strategies for VLEs
Today I’m at the Solstice conference, this is now an annual e-learning conference, but creating a lot deeper thinking spaces for people to engage in discourse. The event is usually preceded by a research panel session and this helps to frame the discussions in the main conference. There were a lot of great sessions today…
Read moreResearch 2.0? Risks and Rewards of Using Emergent Technologies
This blog post supports a presentation at the UKGrad Yorkshire & North East Hub, E-Researcher Development Meeting, an e-learning day for trainers and developers. The presentation will open with a brief introduction to the JISC Users and Innovation Programme and discuss the importance of eliciting user needs. This section uses an image from a Flickr…
Read moreManaging Online Identity
This is a topic that is gaining a lot of coverage, and is extremely important in an academic setting. I’ll be facilitating a workshop next week at the Next Generation Environments event at Aston University with James Farnhill and trying to elicit some issues from both teaching and research practitioners. We’ll be running a couple…
Read moreImmersion or Augmentation: A culture or just another tool?
As well as developing technology and processes many of the Users and Innovation projects are also engaged in much wider debates, pushing our understanding of the role of technology in the wider education sector. The Habitat project is currently exploring the role of virtual worlds such as Second Life, which may on one hand be…
Read moreGuardian Article
There’s a great article in today’s Guardian “Tracking technology in the corridors of learning”, it reports on the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) antennas and tags at the University of Washington’s computer science department. Rather than the Orwellian overtones you might expect, where the ‘evil overseers’ monitor our every move, the system is open…
Read moreEliciting Answers using web 2.0 tools.
Linked-In is a tool for maintaining and developing contacts – one of the features is the ability to ask questions of your network of contacts and the ‘public visibility’ of these questions. I thought it might be interesting to pose a question around web 2.0 and then see what sort of answers we got back.…
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