Education, digital, change and transformation
“Why won’t you let us innovate?!” “You are holding us back!” “If we have to do the things you say, we won’t be able to change anything!” “You’re wrong, we’re right, and we are going to ignore all your concerns!” “Disabled Students will just have to make do with the content they can access!” It’s…
Read moreIs the way we use language in technology having a negative or positive effect? It’s a debate that’s been going on a while, but a discussion over the weekend with a new student prompted me to put something down about the authority that jargon seems to carry. It’s been interesting discussing some of the issues…
Read moreThis year I was invited by SEDA to talk to delegates at their annual summer school about the idea of digital in an academic setting. As I’ve previously posted, I’m not a huge fan of the language in this area or the way I feel that technology is sometimes pushed over practice. I decided that…
Read moreAccording to the Mozilla Open Badges project “A ‘badge’ is a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest.” I’ve been discussing their role in education and personal and professional development with a few colleagues for a couple of months. Whilst I am still undecided whether or not I really like the idea…
Read moreThis week is Open Education Week, myself and some JISC colleagues have spent some time thinking about what that means to us in our practice and more generally. Amber Thomas and David Kernohan have also created diagrams of what there open education space looks like, and building on their ideas and some of my colleagues…
Read moreThe Visitor and Resident project is yielding important data about behaviours in digital environments and the real world. Understanding behaviours around technologies is not new and work around digital literacy is an ongoing theme across education. But digital literacy is only the start of the process and many people are no longer identifying skill sets…
Read moreI’ve been working with some of the new JISC Transformations Projects and looking back at the previous Building Capacity Projects, both of these programmes are based around deploying JISC resources to bring about organisational change. Following a conversation with a someone from Gartner late in 2011 it got me thinking about some of the peripheral…
Read more“the Internet, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts…” with apologies to Douglas Adams.
Read moreRecently I was chatting with a colleague working in the sector who reflected: “When I worked in IT support in a Computer Science Department (nearly 20 years ago now), the department was up for a re-organisation. My role, and those of the rest of the IT admin people, were described by the then Head of…
Read moreI gave a presentation around Dave White’s resident and visitor principle this week and over coffee I got to talking to several academics who raised some of the issues below, so this with thanks to them and to other colleagues like Dave Cormier and Neil Witt. 1. Make sure you’ve used the tool Don’t just…
Read moreResponding to “Student perspectives on technology – demand, perceptions and training needs” This report to the Higher Education Funding Council for England by the National Union of Students had the remit to “gain a broad overview of the level of demand from students – new and potential – for online learning provision in UK higher…
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