What’s this? Google+ is Google’s new approach to social networking. It builds on top of many other Google services, and Google intend for it to become a key feature of most of their products.
Why am I writing about it here on the E-Learning Blog? Well, Google+ has a number of features that may be interesting for educational institutions. I introduced a few of these in a recent UCISA presentation with Google’s William Florance. We recorded the session, and a copy of this is embedded below:
Read on to find out more about Google+ and its potential in Teaching and Learning…
In this article published in the International Journal of Mathematical Education, Sven Trenholm, Lara Alcock and Carol Robinson of the Mathematics Education Centre “investigate issues related to the transformation of lecture practice by the emergence of e-lectures. ..[They] discuss the latter in terms of claims about the efficiencies offered by new technologies and contrast these with possible disadvantages in terms of student engagement in a learning community.”
The study focuses on pre-recorded e-lectures, or screencasts, rather than the capturing of live lectures.
Loughborough colleagues can access the full text here.
We’re holding our annual staff E-learning Showcase on Wednesday 1st Feb from 11.00 am – 2.00 pm in Keith Green Building and very much hope Loughborough colleagues will be able to drop by; prior registration is NOT required. A buffet lunch including hot and cold drinks – and wine – will be provided.
The theme of this year’s event is “E-learning Essentials” and we’ll have a range of stands, poster presentations and live demonstrations on the day, so whether you’re interested in finding about more about the ReVIEW lecture capture system, or you have a specific query about Learn, this event is for you.
As you may be aware, we’re planning to migrate Learn this summer from Moodle Version 1.9 to Version 2 which is a major upgrade, so we’ll have colleagues from the E-learning Systems team in IT Services on hand to answer your questions and give you a sneak preview of some of the new features.
Professor Chris Linton, Provost and DVC, will be giving a welcome at 11.30. At 1pm there will be a half-hour debate on the future of e-learning in HE in the context of rising fees and student expectations. The debate will be introduced by a short ReVIEW video presentation by Jayde Savage, VP Education of the Students’ Union.
And in case the title of this post caught your eye – if you come along with your business card and have it stamped by 5 or more stands, you can enter a prize draw for a new Kindle e-book reader!
For further information contact Charles Shields on 222405 or at c.f.g.shields [at] lboro.ac.uk .
‘Papershow’ might sound like something out of A Clockwork Orange but it is in fact another clever pen superficially similar to the Livescribe Smartpen described in Jenny’s post earlier today. It actually serves a different purpose, insofar as it is intended for live use in the classroom, transmitting wirelessly whatever it writes or draws (on special paper) to the presenter PC. So the lecturer can use it as he or she moves around the room, or it can be handed to a student / group to use.
Since we acquired our demonstration sets around 6 months ago, a number of colleagues have used it in anger. Paul Hernandez-Martinez is a Lecturer in the Mathematics Education Centre and has been using it this semester in a service teaching maths module. Here he describes his experience and that of his students.
This was the first time I used the pen in my lectures and I have to say that I enjoyed it for the following two reasons:
1) Its use meant that I could face my students while solving exercises, and I could see their expressions of understanding or confusion, and therefore I could either move on or slow down and explain an exercise in more basic steps.
2) In my lectures I alternate several times between the computer (PowerPoint to present concepts) and the whiteboard (to solve exercises), therefore the use of the pen meant that I didn’t have to pull up and down the screen, which in the case of one of my classrooms is a very slow and time consuming process.
However, by week 3 or 4, the pen began to develop some glitches: some letters were not correctly displayed, something that in mathematics is crucial (you don’t want to mistake an x for a y, for example). In spite of this, I still felt the pen was a good addition to my lectures. By week 6 or 7 I received some feedback from the department [...] saying that a couple of students did not like the pen. Further to this, I sought direct feedback from my students in form of a questionnaire, and on the question of the electronic pen I received the following results:
From 17 answers that I got back (from a group of 35 registered students), 5 students were negative about the use of the pen, 4 students considered it positive and 8 were unsure about its use. [...]
Further to this, on week 8 the pen stopped working at all during a lecture and I had to reset the laptop, wasting valuable time. I don’t know if these glitches and malfunctions are due to the pen itself (Bluetooth), the software or my laptop [...], but by week 9 I stopped using it and went back to the whiteboard.
I am willing to try it again next year, using a better more powerful laptop, because I consider the benefits greater than the shortcomings.
