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Personalised Learning – is it just for secondary schools?

Hal

Much is said these days about personalisation of learning, but the vast majority of what is said seems to relate mostly to children, or learners, over the age of 10. I’ve never really been too comfortable with the way that we emphasise secondary ages in this kind of way, believing inherently that there is much to gain for learners much younger if we turn our minds to how to apply the same ideals to them.

Take the notion of personalised learning – an approach that seeks to give the individual a pathway to success, negotiated with mentors, tutors or teachers, using modules that they pick for themselves. A kind of supermarket shopping spree with a fixed aim to get to a specific checkout. Along the way through the shop there will be advisors and discussions, checks on progress and possibly even spot checks on the contents of your trolley, but at the end of the journey you pass through the doors equipped for the future that you envisaged from the outset. Read more →

Engage East England, CMS Made Simple

Hal

A recent project required us to create a website for Rochford District Council, Uttlesford District Council and Essex County Council where users would be able to access information relating to public consultations and best practice. Nothing particularly remarkable in that – this is the sort of project that we enjoy doing as it is for a very good purpose and allows a degree of creativity in the design and approach to creating the site.

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Combining PDF files using Mac OSX

Hal

Every now and then I get the urge to start Adobe Acrobat when I’m using my Mac. I don’t like doing this, because Acrobat is a bit of a beast and I’ve had more failures with it than successes. It’s probably of my own doing, but I don’t seem to get on very well with the application.

Avoiding Acrobat is one thing, but there is a feature of it that comes in very handy, and that’s combining different PDF documents into one single document. Up until recently I have always had t use Acrobat, but today I bothered to look beyond. Today, I used ‘Automator’ that little app that sits in the Applications folder and seldom gets used. Read more →

RUGroom at City College Norwich

Hal

One of the proudest moments for me recently was on Friday 8th February at City College, Norwich. This was the grand opening of the RUGroom space, which was created in less than one year and has been in use for the last few months. Our role was to initially specify the technology that would best support and extend the learning opportunities and in so doing we found we were getting more drawn in to the physical design. Not wanting to do a job badly, we called on the skills of Team A Go Go to help with the interior design. The blend of our combined knowledge and understanding of spaces and how they can be used has resulted in a unique space which is providing first class support for the students, who are all autistic.

We combined our knowledge and understanding of how technology can be used to engage learners with our approach to digital creativity and created a program of events, which we delivered to the college on a week by week basis. At the same time as this, we invited a small group to our offices in Chelmsford so that they can help specify and design the online space, too.

The opening on Friday was attended by none other than Charles Clarke, MP for the City and former Secretary of State for Education. He spoke of the potential that is within all learners and the importance of unleashing that, which of course is what we believe, too! Our programme of sessions, run brilliantly by Matthew Eaves, has shown repeatedly that there are ways to engage all learners, and it is about finding the way in… technology is important, but interestingly, not always essential. A lot depends on the learner, the subject and of course the purpose for the activity.

The BBC ‘Look East’ news team were there in the shape of Louise Holmes (who we worked alongside in 2006 with the BBC Blast project), and the event was reported on BBC Look East throughout the afternoon and early evening. A snapshot of this is available on YouTube.

There is more about all this on the Digital Creativity web site, which explores what we did, why we did it and what we found out.

Displaying SMS at Reading University

Hal

One of the tools I used yesterday in Reading was a rather nifty SMS tool, which allows me to receive SMS messages on a mobile phone and display them to the audience. All through the power of bluetooth and some technical wizardry!

As a tool when presenting it offers the audience a chance to interact directly – asking questions, making comments and so on. You need to be careful who you use it with though – there is no moderation, and although the sender’s phone number is captured, the messages appear without any names or identifying features… so all pretty anonymous.

The screen capture here shows what happened when it was used in Reading. As you can see from some of the comments… my mac fell over during the presentation!

If you are looking to do the same thing, drop me a line and we can talk about how we might work on it for you.

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