In February we ran a workshop in London with university staff and a couple of students to gather requirements for a student app. I’m now carrying out sessions directly with students to find out what they would find most useful. Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the University of Lincoln at the invitation of […]
What data and analytics should be presented directly to students? This was the subject of a workshop on 27th Feb in Jisc’s London offices, attended by staff from across UK higher education. We also had with us a couple of students with a keen interest in the area. In advance of the meeting members of […]
I had an interesting discussion yesterday with Phil Butcher, the Open University’s e-assessment guru. He wanted to talk about whether we should invest in embedding our wide range of interactive question types in ebooks. Since the 1970s Open University course teams have attempted to get students to think more deeply about the content they are […]
Ok I’m not exactly comparing like with like here but I am very interested in the potential of ebooks as an alternative way of structuring learning experiences – particularly where there is a large amount of reading involved. With the growing penetration of tablet devices (ownership in the US doubled to 19% over last Christmas) […]
I’ve finally managed to install iBooks 2 and the example book “Life on Earth”. This was a frustrating process that took two and a half hours of upgrades and downloads, requiring the right versions of iOS and iTunes with various reboots of both the PC and the iPad. Arguably I should have upgraded to iOS5 […]
I’ve just had some interesting conversations at an event for new OU module chairs at Cranfield University after presenting on some of the possibilities of elearning for our students. One academic wondered how he could be expected to design courses for smartphones and tablets when the University was not prepared to buy him these devices […]
I’ve been getting a bit obsessed recently about the importance of annotation functionality, as a number of my long-suffering colleagues will testify. Here’s my logic: iPads and other ebook readers will increasingly replace paper Some learners, particularly children, will make the transition away from paper now very quickly and be happy to study considerable amounts […]
This post is nothing to do with elearning but I thought I’d log my experience today of chairing my first meeting using just an iPad. For years I’ve taken a laptop along to meetings and increasingly I’m not the only person to do so. This has the advantage of having everything accessible, together with access […]
People have been blogging about the ipad and its potential for education ever since the thing was announced. I got my hands on one last night and here are my first impressions. I have a laptop and I have an iPhone. I’ve not had a desktop computer for many years – nor do most students. […]
The OU is working on a number of iPhone applications as well as optimising some of its websites for mobile delivery. One example of an iPhone app is Devolve Me where you can see how you might have looked back in the mists of time. Strangely, I end up looking pretty much as I do […]