I attended and ran the Media Enhanced Learning SIG (http) at the University of Glamorgan to run a workshop on mobile podcasting, and facilitate the thunderstorm workshop.
I made a number of observations, from a UCS perspective. Firstly, the keynote was focussing on the Glamorgan iTunesU presence. It did make me think, this is a relatively easy win for UCS. We'd need 250 items for launching, and a large number in reserve to get us through the first year. The issues or show stoppers are definantly not technical. The issue stem from quality (especially audio), and rights management. However, if we set things up correctly at the start, in terms of rights ownership, clearance for 3rd party material, and capture quality etc., then we are in a very useful position. We could rapidly create the material.
An area which would be very useful to develop is our policies around using social software, web 2.0 external software within our teaching and learning. A couple of people mentioned their guidelines and policies are available, so I'll need to follow up, in particular, Social software policy at Glamorgan and at Sheffield Hallam.
Interestingly, lots of their content was very short videos, for instance, something which lasts a couple of minutes. These included recordings from key teaching and learning staff about their discipline, news related issues etc., there was also a number of technical videos around how to use hardware (I'm thinking classroom tech).
The thunderstorm session was very interesting, Salford discussed how they've been using webinars as part of their staff development model. It was very similar to ideas discussed within the team, and what I've tried at other institutions. I'd suggest a key difference was the type of person they used in their webinars. These seemed to be profs, and pro vcs etc., not practitioners. So I suppose we'd need to think carefully about what we are trying to achieve with the sessions. I'd suggest we'd include these in our online resources.
My workshop on mobile podcasting: why and how went relatively well. The slides are available from:
A few enhancements would be around a slide to draw the benefits of mobile learning so to give a context of why mobile podcasting. Also, making it clearer the models of use, ie., learning created, or staff created. With the emphasis, on where does a truly mobile experience add value? I though people were struggling with this. I think the presentation would be enhanced with the AR model of layer, pulling YouTube content based on tags, ie., student generating and distributing content.
Finally, the title might need to change to place the emphasis on creating, distributing and accessing multimedia on mobile devices.
One group did develop an interesting application. This was around patient reports, where the students would create a short summary of patient eye tests. These would be shared with other students and staff for feedback. This would both develop their identification and articulation of discipline knowledge, as well as communication skills.
However, by the end the question of do they need a truly mobile experience was questionable, it sounded like the need for access controls, storage and the listener not having to be in a mobile context.
Still there was a lot of buzz around the workshop, which was my main aim.
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