PC World and more sharp practice ...

Perhaps I ought to setup a different blog for these posts, illustrating how large companies are running sharp practices to get traffic and customers. I recently won a battle at a Tesco store advertising £9 wine for £3 - I blugeoned the staff into giving me another £9 wine for £3 (you didn't think they would actually have any of the £9 wine in did you? Get real).

However, today I've just heard from PC World that they are still advertising an excellent MP3 player at around half it's retail price - however, yes, you've guessed - they don't have any stock - what a surprise!? Not today, not yesterday, not the day before either - yet the listing is still on their site. I've suggested they give me any version of that player for £14.99, or even if that's not available the larger version, but I'm not holding my breath ...

There's this new brill song called Mrs Robinson ...

My youngest child came running into our bedroom a few evening ago exclaiming that he'd found this brilliant song on YouTube called "Mrs Robinson" by a new guy called Simon Garfunkle.

Well, sweet a the time, but it does remind me of coming to a Learning Technology team and coming across stuff, saying look how brill this new stuff is, and getting knowing looks from colleagues down here.

However, there is a service, and whilst admittedly it is 18 months old, it still might be very new to seasoned professionals in Learning Technology. It's called seesmic, looks like the video version of twitter, and it could have uses in education, such as:

• Delivery of content to one or many students
• Online asynchronous discussions with rich visual and audio content
• Ability for tutors to easily feedback and comment on individuals work.

Have a look and see what you think: http://www.seesmic.com/

I'd be very interested in your opinions, and doubly interested if you'd like to have a chat about the educational uses seesmic could be put to.

Kind regards to all
D

Is this fraud? Are CPW trying dirty tricks to move me off UpFront tariff to O2 50?

I renewed my UpFront 50 (don’t ask – you can’t get it any more – which is probably why I’m having this problem) with Car Phone Warehouse around October 2008. They subsequently start texting me, saying they would change my tariff to O2 50 and charge me £18.60 per month (which is about what I pay for the whole year – no wonder they want to get me off it).

So, I rang, complained, they said they’d sorted it, and then next month … you guessed it … etc, and continued into November and December. Ended with a chat with two people from CPW, one male, and a separate conversation with one female, swearing blind that I’d not have the same problem, and it’d finally been sorted.

So I ignored more messages from CPW until tonight I noticed that they’ve changed my tarrif to O2 50, for Jan, Feb & March.

I’ve emailed them this … and will post the reply, if / when they do.

Keep your RSS’s peeled …

Pedagogy of e-learning – a tutor’s perspective.

The advantages and disadvantages of on-line learning are commonly understood – examples include “any time, anywhere” learning and a lack of secondary channels of feedback (e.g. non verbal communication) respectively.  Thus it follows that we need to modify our pedagogy of teaching and learning to better fit the new tools and techniques that ICT affords us.

Edge Hill’s own SOLSTICE project runs many sessions focussing on different aspects of on-line pedagogy; two of the most important areas perhaps being “content” and asynchronous discussion:

Content: We cannot simply upload the PowerPoint we used in class – it lacks your verbal contributions, and any enrichment from the rest of the group.  We must create content which creates a similar learning experience as if the session were delivered traditionally.  One downside of this approach is that it can result in large amounts of text over many pages.  However, we can break up monolithic text with attractive multimedia content such as images, video and audio.  Also you can embed student contributions from previous courses (perhaps even including anticipated student contributions).

Discussion: On-line asynchronous discussions are a great tool for enabling students to discuss and reflect on topics being covered by the course.  However, we need to be cautious in how we set these up and must formulate our initial “invitation” carefully to encourage rich contributions which maximise the learning process for all those involved.  Some of the best discussions have been instigated with a contentious proposal designed to encourage those less likely to contribute due to concerns such as a lack of confidence with the technology or the permanence of their contributions.

 

I'm trying to introduce the pedagogy of e-learning ...

... and found "E-learning and constructivism" from Canterbury - wonderful stuff - cheers Canterbury.

Playlist.com

The trail was hot ... I'd just uncovered a comment by one of my tutors which led to a blog which led to playlist.com which led to an hour messing with the content, play lists and wondering who was making money or disrespecting intellectual copyright, or perhaps the oppossite of all those things.

Here's the list that I made:

... and in the best tradition of the web, this will probably be my current version, not the one I created when i wrote this.

regards to all ... D

Turn It In - Plagarism detection software

Last week I went to a staff developemnt session on Turn It In. In our uni, it's billed as "Plagarism Detection Software" and was originally intended to receive all first year work in 08-09 - but this last bit seems to have slipped.

Of interest is the notion that a piece of work which shows no similarity to any existing work should be seen as "Bad", not "Good", and even more so for undergraduate work. This is because we should be encouraging wide reading and building on existing work, so therefore expect to see quotations and phrases from leaders in the relevant fields.