Soundcloud track on the 2011 assignment

Send us your sounds
I wanted to do this podcast all day, but only got to it Friday night at 10! I must say, if it was not for the Soundcloud iPad app I discovered, it would probably have stayed a good intention. Well there you have it - I am a digital native (tongue in cheek)! 


Do listen as it is about the assignment. Good luck and enjoy the weekend.


Click here to go to the Soundcloud track


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Screencasting software

I added this information on a comment - but thought to make it more visible here!

What software is available to make screencasts/ podcasts?

There obvioulsy tens (if not hundreds) of products out there and this Wikipedia comparison of most available screencasting software is quite detailed. The ones I know and use on a regular basis are:

• Audacity: Freeware with which to record and then to produce mp3 soundfiles.
• Camtasia Studio: Great podcasting software from www.techsmith.com that can do anything from videos to podcasts to screencasts. The publishing options are fantastic and the file compression (especially mp4s) are wonderful. 1 month trial download - you have to try it!
• Camtasia Relay: A centralised service (installed at a specific institution - available at Stellenbosch) that allows one to record lectures in the form of screencasts (Voice and all screen activity - like a PPT lecture) and then automatically publishes the videos on a central repository.
• www.screenr.com: Free online screen recording (5 minutes max).
www.screencast-o-matic.com: Free online screen recording (15 minutes)
• www.screencast.com: Great free repository (up to 2 Gb at least) for uploading and sharing your videos.
• Jing: Making and sharing screencasts, as well as screenshots over the internet. Quite useful but file size is an issue with longer videos.
• www.soundcloud.com: My new favourite place for creating and storing soundfiles!
• www.youtube.com: Still a great place to publish videos or even screencasts as it embedds nicely in blogs, and also has an automatic mobile compression service if accessed by a mobile device (like a cell phone or iPad).

Have fun!

How to embed a video in a blog post

On special request (and because I love making screencasts)!

Quick and dirty surveys

This is maybe a bit too late for the Analysis Design Develop and Implement phases of ADDIE, but may still be of great use for the Evaluation stage. Or especiallly for the prototyping idea that was suggested in the previous post.
In this post I want to tell you about two quick and dirty ways of doing an online survey/ questionnaire that could be used to gain feedback from your audience about the prototype, as part of the analysis phase and for the evaluation phase as part of an iterative design process.

1. Google forms: Don't you just love Google! As part of the Google docs (http://docs.google.com) offering, one is able to design online Forms which can be used as online questionnaires. See an example of a recent survey with Google forms we did for a course on the use of ICTs for Higher Education here. The example looks great and is a bit more detailed but it was really easy to create! I made a screencast on how to create your own Google form. The screencast video can be watched by going to web address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKKyOGcZ6w



2. Survey monkey: This is probably the most famous online Survey tool and the basic plan is free (Google forms is always free of course). I actually just completed a Survey monkey questionnaire this morning about the new Blackboard learning management system. To see what Surveymonkey is all about, go to web address: www.surveymonkey.com

Any other ideas on how to get feedback from students, clients or audiences? Have you used other ways to get the evaluation and feedback "job done"? Please comment and share.

Marshmallows and prototypes

What do the two have in common you may ask! And what does it have to do with e-Learning in Health Sciences!

Well, the prototype is easy, as all participants in the module have to design a small prototype e-Learning product/experience/idea/curriculum etc.

The marshmallows come from a colleague at Stellenbosch University's Business School, Martin Butler, who referred me to The Marshmallow Challenge, an exercise he does with senior business executives on the value of prototyping. This was after I sent him a link to a short document on how to choose an LMS for an institution (the gist is that one has to ask a lot of questions). As Martin says - yes, questions are important, but more important is building a quick prototype and getting feedback on the idea. In this way one sees the issues that even the questions could never have anticipated!

Thought this might be a good reminder of how we should be thinking about e-Learning design.

Three things - great site, hybrid teaching and uptake

The idea of the central blog is of course to provide interesting references to new technologies, resources and research that will hopefully inspire us all to keep the e-Leanring flame burning brightly. To keep my own momentum going I have three things:

1. Elearninglearning site: I cannot stress enough how wonderful and important the www.elearninglearning.com site is. I subscribe to the weekly digest and this is a great way to be alerted to interesting news, tools and articles around e-Learning. In fact my number 2 "thing" came from a link from the e-mail digest of elearninglearning! So here goes thing nr 2...

2. Hybrid teaching and learning: There has been a lot written about blended- or mixed mode, or hybrid learning, and the Learning Solution article "Hybrid learning: How to reach digital natives" gives a concise and useful summary of the issues as well as ideas for using the power of hybrid teaching and learning. Seeing that the kind of students that we are already teaching might gain by us knowing about this powerful model, it is a worthwhile read and builds on the post I wrote recently about Digital immigrants . I would like some comments on the hybrid model - especially on how you implement it in the Higher Education context. Which brings me to the third thing ...

3. The benefits of e-Learning is not always so abvious: This article is quite clever in that it is honest about the fact that e-Learning does not function "automatically". Sometimes you could have the greatest e-Learning idea or course, and the students are quite "langtand" or unmotivated to join. The author takes a look at cultural factors (mainly West vs East) and how that may impact on the uptake of e-Learning. It does not only give a negative outlook, but suggests ways in which one might address the issues of adoption (like couching your learning as a traditional style of learning, but through a technology medium).

I hope everybody is tinkering away at their prototype design for e-Learning. The blogs are quiet. Could we have some dialogue perhaps - it always makes a facilitator's heart beat faster!

I am a (worried) digital immigrant - and proud of it

I am a bit worried today, and worry leads (if we are lucky) to reflection. My worry should maybe be called pedagogical "Angst" as I am contemplating the reasons why this year's module is less dynamic in its "out of the blocks" start of the 1 month e-Learning dash to glory.

As facilitator I reflect on the following questions:

• Why are so few of this year's participants not actively taking part in their blogs at the end of week one?
• Did I make a mistake to introduce an extra new technology (i.e. Soundcloud.com) so early in the process, thinking that it will lead to excitement rather than fear?
• What else can I do to make the participants in the module actively and immersively take part in their learning? I.e. will an online voucher prize e.g. for the best blog of the week make a difference to the intrinsic motivation?
• Are there other reasons that participation is so low? I am thinking of school holidays in South Africa; maybe fatigue/ recovery from the previous research assignment module; too much clinical work during the day and too tired after hours ...

Please comment if you have any ideas on how to improve the module, I would really like to practise what I preach and be able to adapt as we go along - or at least change for next year's session.

Maybe you thought about what the "digital immigrant" refers to in the title of this post?

Well, my first idea was to write a post about how the distinction that Marc Prensky introduced in 2001 (click here for an article by Prensky) between digital natives and digital immigrants lies at the heart of a lot of the fears that people that are BBC (Born before computers) have when thinking about and using technology. Prensky (2001:2) states:

"the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language" (Prensky 2001:

Since this idea has been seeded, the educational thinking around technology has never been the same. The distinction sometimes creates fear in the hearts of digital "illegal immigrants" (i.e. those that find themselves in the digital world, but are not even trying to assimilate), and a lack of flow and creativity in those that are using technology for teaching because they are always feeling like they will never be true "natives". For some it has become a motto, or even a rationalisation. Be it as it may, the distinction has created a huge chasm between two groups that I think is a false divide.

In the last couple of years, there has been increased criticism on this dichotomy with thinkers and authors from all sides questioning the sweeping statement type characteristics of the initial research. Recent examples are:

• Kennedy et al (2008) who questions the fact that ALL incoming students are so adept at technology and then states: "Such generalisations risk overlooking a more complex mix of technology based skills, knowledge and preferences among the student population".
• Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008) who critically reviews the evidence about the debate and comes to the conclusion: "A sense of pending crisis pervades this debate. Hwever, the actual situation is far from clear ...the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'". They then ask for a more disinterested approach. 
• The Economist Monitor (2010) asks if it is really helpful to talk about digital natives. They site Siva Vaidhyanathan, Micheal Wesch and Sue Bennett implying that one should dig deeper. Quoting Wesch: "incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly, especially when it comes to the tools’ social and political potential. Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population".
• Craig Pladson (2011) does not mince his words: "The more I think about these phrases, the more annoying and inaccurate they become. Thinking about digital natives versus digital immigrants in terms of age is fundamentally incorrect. To me, being a digital native or digital immigrant has everything to do with mindset and nothing to do with age."

So, where does it leave us and our wonderful module? We are (I guess) all digital immigrants in the Prenskyan sense of the word, but that should not cripple us in our learning. If it is not about age, but about mindset and the willingness to learn, then we will all be able to excel in our discovery of this new and wonderful world of technology. The internet is not going to go away, is becoming easier to use, and can be (and I truly believe this) used to facilitate deeper learning than ever before to a new generation whose language (even if it may have different levels and competencies) is "Web".

I look forward to your own "learnings" as reflected by your active and interactive writings on your blogs!

Since writing this post, I have come across another interesting post about the same debunking the myth by Dan Pontefract who cites even more research making more or less the same point.

Reference list:

Bennet, S, Maton, K & Kervin, L (2008). The 'digital natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 39, Nr 5, 775-786. Available online: http://goo.gl/QMYIG

Kennedy, GE, Judd, TS, Churchward, A, Gray, K & Krause, K-L (2008).First year students' experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2008, 24(1), 108-122. Available online: http://goo.gl/IKbUI

Pladson, C (2011). Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, blog post on http://craigpladson.posterous.com. Available online: http://goo.gl/aRLhu

Prensky, M (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in On the Horizon. MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001. Available online: http://goo.gl/4oYb

The Economist - Monitor (2010). The net generation, unplugged. Technology and society: Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of “digital natives” who have grown up with the internet? Available online: http://goo.gl/NEnLF

Voice Power - welcome to October 2011

A BIG word of welcome to all of us to our joint e-Learning module blog as part of the MPhil HSE!
This year we are going to try something new and exciting! I will place audio messages (podcasts) on Soundcloud where we as an e-Leanring module have our own special group (called MPhilHSE). 
Click on the icon/picture/logo below of soundcloud to go to the group audio dropbox. It really is easy to use, so try it out! I have placed one or two recordings on there already. Please feel free to experiment.
JOIN the group (you will quickly have to create a username and password - or log in with your Facebook account) and then it is easy to add comments in the discussion, as well as to record your voice directly online.
One can record online, or upload audio files that can be listened to by all of us. There is also space for discussions. All you need is a headset! There are some other interesting features as well, but lets start with the basics. (Remember to jin the group and to get a Souncloud account/ log in with Facebook.
Task: Everybody go to our SoundCloud group Audio dropbox and record something of less than a minute! "Hear" you online!


Send us your sounds

Welcome 2011 Second years!

I am busy preparing for your elective session on e-learning and just wanted to check if we would be able to blog from the computers in the CSS. As it turns out, it seems we can!

I really am looking forward to our time together!