A d c o l o g

Voting systems have always been contentious in ACL – they cost a lot and one system shared among a whole directorate can undermine the efficiency of what we’re trying to do.  What would be really good would be if all the students carried their own voting systems with them , all the time.

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.

I’ll add more to this post soon – in the mean time, go to Community Walk to see for yourself. A great tool, as you can see from the map below, simulating a walk from Haworth to Top Withens. Nothing new – but an easy way of doing it.

CommunityWalk Map – Walk to Top Withens

Second Life and similar multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) are not something we mention in ACL much. Maybe that’s because they can be resource and bandwidth intensive and the chance of local authorities opening their networks to them is unlikely.

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.

Open Source is programmes or applications that are free.  Examples include MOODLE & OpenOffice.  They are free to download, free to copy (usually under certain conditions) and, if you’re a techie, free to develop. 

 Using Open Source software is always a minefield in learning – one the one hand, institutions strive to make savings and Open Source is free to buy and use, enthusiasts can custom and develop them and, if used in the community, learners can take a copy home for free.  On the other hand, Open Source is sometimes untested and can come with very little in the way of security guarantees. 

 A group of Open Source organisations have now organised a day for IT Professionals around Risk Management and Open Source, “Risk Management in Open Source Procurement”.  The event, held in Oxford on March 18, is free of charge but requires registration.

 Details can be found here. (http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2008-03-18/form.xml)

I don’t know if anyone is reading this blog yet, as I’ve not really publicised it, but as a new blogger I’m very interested in where blogs can go. I think blogs are a must for all people in ACL – they can enable reflection as a professional, or be used as a method to communicate good practice. If you’re planning on opening up a blog to the world, they are also a great way to reach and inform communities.

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.

E-Guides are very important for many ACL providers and at RSC-YH we’re hoping to support E-Guides byhelping them to share good practice and ideas. However, before we go about doing this, we thought we’d find out what E-Guides want and in what form.

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.

Mindmapping isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – it certainly isn’t mine. As a result, I’ve never made a huge use of mind maps, but a new one caught my eye: Mind42.

Mind42 isn’t just a mind map – it is a Web 2.0 application. This means that you can share your mind map with other people if you want them to collaborate or view it. This tool can then be embeeded into webpages, so that a wider community can see or, if you want, edit your mind map. The best thing of all is, in line with Web 2.0 philosophy, it’s free!

www.mind42.com

Let’s get mapping!