Last week, JISC RSC YH’s “Excellence in E-Learning” managers forum met to look at the rapidly growing theme of e-safety and I, with the help f of technical advisor Ken Scott and policy expert Kathy Boyer, presented the issues involved.

My approach was to look at the different issues in e-safety and then think how they could be grouped.  I grouped them as ones related to Personal Safety, Institutional Responsibility and Infrastructre/Technical safety.  Each of these strands, I argued, could be approached in three different ways – the “shut eye” approach (ignore it and hopes it goes away), the “ban it” (lockdown) approach, or the “knowledge” (proactive) approach.

After that we looked at some of the emerging issues – where do we stand if people are using their OWN decices while in our care?

Finally, Kathy summed up the fact that e-safety is now a key aspect for OFSTED. The slides from this presentation are included in this post.  A list of safety resources are available from http://delicious.com/tag/eielsafe – you can add you own by using the “eielsafe”  tag in delicious.

Today, I’ve been following the SOCITM conference for local authority ICT professionals.   E-Safety is a top theme with them too.

So, how do we move this forward?  What do you think the issues are for e-safety and ACL?  How locked down is your system?  Do you have issues through the NGfL?  We’re looking at putting on some e-safety events later in the year, or early in the new year – so let us know, what are your issues and where would you like our support.

For me, this is really good news.  Back in January 2008 me and Ken Scott (our technical e-learning adivser) organised the “Creative Connectivity” event in Leeds.  The aim was to get ICT Departments and learning practitioners talking.  The event went very well.  Among the speakers was Dave Briggs (here’s his blog about it), who raised, for me, the issue of the risk of NOT.  We’re all worried about what happens if our learners access something they shouldn’t. But what’s the risk of them not being able to access something they SHOULD?   What is the risk of our learners NOT being able to access social technology at all?

This has been an ongoing theme.  I raised the issues in my personal blog and youth work social media expert Tim Davies raised it in his.    It isn’t just the net-heads who think this.  The University of Illinois have carried out a study that suggests the same outcome.

However, we’re still faced with the dangers.  All too recently, Twitter in education  came under attack from the media when a Scottish teacher apparently misused it.  More often than not, however, these risks are as a result of unclear guidance on HOW to use it, rather than the technology itself.   It’s a matter not of danger, but of policy (as indicated by PR Guru Neville Hobson’s blog).

I’m talking about the dangers, rather the infrastructure issues here.  There’s still an argument around the intensive use of video sits such as YouTube, as they can have an effect on bandwidth.  However, there are ways of addressing this and that’s where organisations like ours (JISC RSC YH in case you’re not sure), come in.

Having worked in ACL for a number of years, I know that many council ICT departments don’t put education as their top priority, let alone adult community education.  However, when it comes to learning, it is so important that these resources are available.  There are lots of different approaches to maintaining security – from black lists (where certain sites are blocked) to white lists (where everything’s blocked except what has been deemed safe) to open access and self policing.  All have merits and case studies to back up their claims and all can be considered.  However, simply the consideration is the key here.

I’m going to be contacting Socitm to see if there is anything we can add to their survey, however, I urge any local authority ACL provider who has opinions on this to contact their ICT manager and let them know, so that when they complete the survey, they can see the case ofr technology in learning.  Please feel free to add your comments below too, with your ideas of security in local authorities.

I’m talking, of course, about “The Learning Revolution” white paper from DIUS on Informal Learning.  Most of you will have read it and formed your own opinions on it, so this isn’t the place for me to pass comment on the paper itself.  However, this is the place for me to examine how this affects your future plans, with particular reference to technology.

The paper has been widely publicised in terms of joined up working  between the Thrid Sector and Local Authorities and the £20million “Learning Transformation Fund”.  A good example is John Denham MP’s piece in MJ about the paper.

What’s been less well circulated is the use of innovation and technology in the paper.  There’s a whole chapter on it and there are constant references to “finding new ways” of teaching and learning.  What’s more, there are grants of £100,000 available to drive this change, with even more of offer for exceptionally innovative projects.

There is a definite government agenda here, and technology is clearly in it.  But what for the traditional ACL projects – is there anything there for them?

A friend of mine remarked that this would be an excellent opportunity for local authorities to demonstrate their ability to work as a cohesive and inter-agency organisation – and the bid can fund them to do so.

I’m working closeley with DIUS at the moment to get the latest information and, for providers in the Yorkshire & Humber area, there is a webinar coming up, the results of which I’ll blog here.  But in the meantime, ensure you read the paper, the bid paper and, when thinking of innovative projects, think outside the box.   Sir Ken Robinson’s TED TALK on innovation and creativity in leanring may be an inspiration for it.

Happy bidding!

The web is made up of various types of information.  The first, blandest, format is text, sometimes enhanced slightly through HTML.  Most webpages you see are written in a form of HTML.  HTML allows a web designers to change the way the page looks to a human eye (the format), by making text bold, larger, smaller or in different colours.  However, it still needs a human mind to understand it.  If you send the information to someone with the HTML taken out, it just becomes plain old boring text.  That’s where XML comes in.  XML marks out the content of the page rather than the format, meaning that when the information is sent, another web page can process it in it’s own way.  If that’s a bit confusing, think of it like this.  This blog entry is made up of various content items.  There’s the title (Using Yahoo! Pipes…) and there’s the image, then there’s the actual text.    If you’re reading this on the site, the title is green, the image is flushed to the left and the text is grey.  This is set by ADCOLOG’s HTML code.  However, if you wanted this on your website, the colours might not match.  So, you’d want to get the XML feed from this page, put it on your page and tell it that the TITLE should be orange, the text blue and you don’t want the image.  Because the XML says which bit of the text is the title, your web page could process this.

Another advantage of XML is that you can use it to keep track of changing websites.  If you have an RSS Reader (I use Google Reader) you can subscribe to an XML feed and every time I put a new post on here it will show up in your reader.  If you do this with all the websites you want to check, it means that ratherr than having to spend hours having to check lots of sites, you can see “headlines” of  all the new posts and changes, read the ones you want and disregard the rest.  Dave Briggs has some good tips on organising this.

OK, so we’ve got all these feeds of information going about the web.  Sometimes, you may want to bring them together.  For example, we’re about to launch a new feed for our E-Guides.  As an E-Guide (which is an ACL or WBL E-Champion) you don’t often have time to check lots of feeds.  That’s a job us E-Learning Advisers can take on.  But, there are a number of feeds involved.  Firstly, there is the feed from this blog.  Then there is the feed from the WBL advisor’s blog.  Then there are resources that I’ve spotted, marked on my del.icio.us account, and ones that the WBL advisor has spotted too.  To get every E-Guide to subscribe to all four feeds would be an unrealistic exercise.  Which is where Yahoo! Pipes comes in.  First, you need a Yahoo! account.  After that, go to Yahoo! Pipes and click on ‘Create A Pipe’.  Now, you have a whole list of different options down the left hand side and an empty workspace to the right.  Expand the ‘Sources’ tab and drag the ‘Fetch a Feed’ into the workspace.  Enter the first feed URL into it.  Now do the same again for as many feeds as you want to get.  Next, expand the ‘operators’ tab on the left.  Select the ‘Union’ Module and drag it onto the workspace.  Now, draw a line (click and hold the mouse) from the white circle at the bottom of each ‘fetch feed’ module to the white circle on the ‘Union’ module.  Then draw a line from the ‘Union’ Module to the ‘Pipe Output’.  In the diagram shown, I’ve also added a ‘Sort’ module, which arranges the feed in order of date.  There’s lots of different things you can play with here to sort and alter feeds, if you’re slightly more technically minded.

The result is a pipe that combines these feeds.  By saving the pipe and clicking “Run Pipe” you can then get this as a feed in itself or as a widget to go on your website.  We’ve put it on our E-Guide forum.

It may seem very complicated but it’s actually relatively straightforward. What’s more, it means that the “front end” information the E-Guides get (either by RSS or Email) will be clear and relevant, saving them time in the long run.

It’s worth getting to know these tools, as information flows are becoming more and more important as a tool for learning on the Web.  Information flows are an essential part of the semantic web which we’ll be hearing a lot more about over the coming months and years.  RSS Readers and Yahoo! Pipes are just the start of managing and manipuulating the huge amouunts of information we receive into something useful to help us with our teaching and learning.

Maybe this is because of the cost.  Maybe it’s because the infrastructure used by many ACL providers doesn’t support e-portfolios.  Maybe it’s because of the mixed messages we keep hearing about the many e-portfolio options we can choose from.

There is no doubt that the custom built e-portfolio can prove useful and can fit in perfectly at many institutions and quite possibly some ACL providers.  However, I recently came across another option, one that is free of charge and can be used on any net enabled computer in the world.  It’s name?  Google.

I think everyone knows the search engine “Google” by now and most will know the maps and image search facility.  What many may not know about is Google Docs, Google Sites or, under their joint name, Google Apps.

Google Apps can be set up by an institution to work within their own domain.  Restrictions can be put on this so that anyone without a @learningprovider.ac.uk domain couldn’t share or transmit outside.  Or there could be no control and it could be open.  Google Apps contains:

• Email Addresses for all users (Gmail)
• Free access to compatible equivalents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint (Google Docs)
• Google Sites (Google Sites)
• Google Calender
• iGoogle Start Page

Even if you don’t want to take the formal step of setting up Apps, Google can act as an e-portfolio, as all of these components can be used individually.  Setting Apps up on a domain just adds for a more infrastructure sound service.

Documents can be uploaded or created directly in Google Docs, videos and sounds uploaded to YouTube and emails and to do lists created in Gmail, Calendar and iGoogle.  Blogs can be created in Blogspot.  It’s worth noting at this point that the YouTube and Blogspot postings don’t need to be public.  While they can’t be restricted to a domain (as they could on a commercial e-portfolio) they can be marked private but shareable, so they can only be found by the person putting together the portfolio.  The documents can be done by the student, or opened to collaboration with other users for group work or marking.

At this point a Google Site can be created.  This is an extremely easy to use interface which allows everything to be brought together.  An example of it can be found here.  This site can be open, or can be restricted to particular email addresses.  You can add gadgets for blog RSS feeds alongside your google docs, youtube videos etc.  You can add documents directly or as attachments and comments can be added too.

Another advantage of using this an an e-portfolio system is that students can keep what they produce and continue to show it off, share it or use it.

This won’t suit everyone;  it isn’t secure in the way a corporate solution would be and it is a buisness tool that can be adapted for education, rather than a bespoke service.  However, it is free, it is easy and, hopefully, this could spell an opportunity for Adult Community Learning.

To see my example GooglE-portfolio click here

Until recently, I’d have said that sounded a bit like an idealistic statement.  But today I discovered SMSPoll and various similar tools which allow you do exactly this – through  mobile phone text messaging.

OK, so it’s not perfect.  Not all learners have mobile phones and some might resent having to spend 10p on a vote.  However, this month mobile calls are set to exceed landline calls for the first time and most mobile packages now come with unlimited or high numbers of text messages.

The different SMS Poll sites available vary greatly.  Sadly, almost all the free ones are for US Telephone numbers, though this may well change soon.  There are at least two that work for UK numbers, and both are free initially, though there are limitations and a commercial package might be needed for full use.

Cardboard Fish allows you to add SMS tools to your website including polls, comments and blogs.  The problem is, you need a server to do so and, while you can use Google Pages or Geocities etc, they are limited in how they display it.  It is free of charge.

SMSPoll is great, visually. Sadly, it only allows polls at the moment and the free package is very limited.  The fantastic aspect oF this system, however, is that you can put poll results live into powerpoint (assuming you have an internet connection of course).

This doesn’t fully address the voting system problem – however it goes some way in helping organisations with lower budgets to make use of technology, while allowing votes that go on longer term.

UPDATE:  I tried SMS POLL during a talk at Barnsley yesterday and it worked really well.  It takes a while for the votes to update, so I gave people the questions, went through a few PowerPoint slides then returned to it, the feed coming live from the net into PowerPoint via the O2 dongle.  For an analysis of the results, see the upcoming post on Wesenwille.

However, MUVEs offer a great deal to ACL. They are great as inclusive technology, as people can be anything they want. There’s a great video about it here.

Role play or similar is sometimes used extensively in community based courses – and MUVEs provide a great potential for that. Apart from all that, MUVEs are fun – they are a great way to engage people and give them a new platform to show off their skills.

If you want to find out more about MUVEs and their use in education, why not take a look at the RSC YH’s Excellence in E-Learning Event. It would be great to see some ACL there.

Dave Briggs, who recently spoke at the RSC YH Creative Connectivity event, has posted a good guide on where to start and what to think about.

I’ve shared this on my ACL RSS Feed too – make sure you subscribe!

Yesterday I was at RSC YH’s event on supporting learners using mobile technology.

While the majority of the event focussed around some FE funding, a number of the technologies demonstrated had a real benefit to ACL, whether in the classroom or maybe even staff development.

One example was RedHalo, a platform that allows multiple mobile devices running Windows Mobile to be synced with an online “mothership”. Therefore, teachers can send , say, a video or podcast to all the students on their list, which they can pick up and look at in their own time.  It works the other way too.  Students could complete an assignment , put it on their mobile device and upload it back to the teacher.  What’s great about this is a restricted version is free of charge.

Lillian Soon & Dave Sugden, who are currently undertaking some work with RSC YH, also presented a short presentation about using text messaging, including Bluetooth Broadcasts, which sends a message to every Bluetooth device in the room.  Some very real potential in this for ACL, both in terms of community and learner engagement and day-to-day functionality.

To that end we’ve made a survey, which should only take a few minutes to complete. Could all Yorkshire & Humber E-Guides please go here, so we can start supporting you with your cascading.