Technology brings classroom experience to distance learners

Course materials can be downloaded on to mobile devices and accessed by students wherever they are. Photograph: Mike Harrington/Lifesize

Students on the University of Leicester's new distance learning MSc in security, conflict and international development face more challenges than the average distance learner. For example, some students might spend weeks with no access to an internet connection, working in a refugee camp in post-conflict countries. How does the university make sure these remote students have everything they needed to carry out their studies?

"When you're doing that sort of thing, you can't be carrying huge folders of printed material," says Prof Adrian Beck, head of the university's department of criminology. "It struck us that we needed to find a way for them to transport our materials that is highly flexible but low-weight, and gives them access to all the material they will need while on the go."

The solution was to give every student on the course a free iPad, on to which they could download a bespoke app and all the course materials. Despite concerns from the university about security and technical support, the plan has gone smoothly. A few months into the MSc, no iPads have been lost or stolen and students have responded with enthusiasm.

Distance-learning providers already use virtual learning environments (VLEs) to enable students to read documents online, contact tutors, submit coursework, or engage in discussions with other students. But the increasing popularity of smartphones, iPads and Kindles means that universities are now responding to student demand to access those resources from their mobile devices.

The Open University (OU), for example, is developing a new generation of interactive course materials for tablet computers and has just launched OU Anywhere, a tablet and smartphone app that enables students to download all the course materials they need on to their mobile devices. The app also allows users to access the university's VLE to interact with fellow students and tutors. For distance learners, who often struggle to combine studying with full-time work, this provides a new flexibility. Prof Mike Sharples, chair in educational technology at the OU, says mobile devices are ideal for students who want to study during lunchbreaks or quiet moments at work, or on the train home.

As the cost of technology falls, mobile devices become more powerful and cross-platform development becomes simpler, it seems inevitable that universities will start to take mobile devices into account when they design learning resources.

Stuart Sutherland, senior development and delivery manager at the University of Derby Online, which has recently introduced an app to allow mobile access to its VLE, thinks that the advent of free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) is forcing traditional universities to raise their game, and to design content specifically for a mobile environment, such as short videos or podcasts. "The small video explaining a difficult mathematic or scientific phenomenon is always a better way of explaining that than text," says Sutherland. Terese Bird, a learning technologist at the University of Leicester who is evaluating the impact of tablets in distance learning, argues that mobiles can be ideal for bite-sized learning: "One benefit identified by scholars is that if you learn something in short frequent bursts, you may very well be able to learn better than doing a five-hour study spree at the weekend."

Opportunities for social learning open up when students use mobile devices: the OU, for example, plans to allow students to share their e-reader annotations online, and to see which other students are reading the same text and chat online to them about it. The Leicester MSc students have an app that allows them to see where other students on their course are located and make contact with them. They can also make video calls to their tutors in given time slots or they can ask written questions, with the answers then made available to other students. Twitter functionality will be built into the next iteration of the app. As one student, RAF squadron leader Julian Turner, says: "I will often be using a note-taking app, ebook reader app and mind mapping app concurrently when studying."

Mobile devices offer not just convenience and flexibility, but potentially a new way of studying. Equipped with cameras, video and sound recorders, and GPS, they enable students to become creators as well as users of information – by recording a short video for a course assessment, for example. John Traxler, professor of mobile learning at the University of Wolverhampton, says mobile technologies can be used to help undergraduates "think like scientists, to have hypotheses and test them by gathering data in the wild rather than re-enacting what Michael Faraday did 200 years ago".

It may be early days, but the potential for using mobile technologies to transform the experience of distance learning is huge. As Beck says: "Distance learning has gone from being something pretty static and lonely to something that is much more dynamic and interactive, and you can find ways to engage students in a community of learners that was quite difficult to do in the past."

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Virtual Classroom Trends for 2013/2014

The virtual classroom is arguable the single most impactful trend in EdTech today. Despite the visibility and ubiquity of BYOD, the virtual classroom alone holds the potential for the most far reaching change in teaching, learning, and the district’s processes and approaches. Mitigating some elements of the physical focus of where learning takes place offers the chance to make some compelling advances in teaching and learning.

When it comes to looking at the impact of the virtual classroom, there are two primary aspects that need to be considered, the technology to support the virtual classroom and the use of this technology from a teaching perspective. Given the focus of this blog, we’ll focus more on the first element.

One of the biggest drawbacks to a number of the current virtual classroom implementations is that they require “special” rooms or equipment that is not found throughout the school. This makes the use of virtual classrooms somewhat limited and generally focused on larger groups. By making the technology more ubiquitous, even if it means using less capable tools like Skype, the reality is that for virtual learning to grow, it has to become a real alternative to physically proximal learning. In some respects, this is less of a technology question than it is a curriculum question and the drive to have teachers use existing common tools, rather than wait for the most technically capable solutions to be deployed. I expect we’ll see a number of broad virtual learning initiatives, especially for small or single student use like special education that use basic videoconferencing just to get the job done.

One of the missing elements in the Virtual classroom is tools designed to leverage and enhance virtual learning. This focuses on some key capabilities that I think must be enhanced. Work-sharing where teachers and students can look at work being done in real time and share input on that individual work so that 1:1 learning is more engaging. Another aspect that I think needs some improvement is what I’ll call “explorability”. Simply put, with the internet, you can pursue the personal route you’d like to take when gathering information or “exploring”. Too often the learning software is very structured and rigid for virtual classrooms, making the less much more rote. Finally, we need to up-level the amount of interactivity and engagement in the virtual classroom. For example, real time graphics that show what is happening with the rest of the class; what chapter are they reading, how many examples have they done on the work, what is their number of correct answers? All this input is often found in a traditional class by looking around.

In my opinion, these two factors are going to be the biggest trends on the technology side. I know that many vendors are still driving for the Cadillac level room based offerings that provide more capabilities, but I believe ubiquity is far more important. As to the software side, we are really in the early stages here, and many exciting new approaches will definitely come to EdTech in the next 12 months!

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[Infographic] 7 Reasons to Choose the ThinkPad X131e Over the iPad for your Classroom

Classrooms have gone digital, and teachers need devices to keep up. The Lenovo ThinkPad® X131e was designed specifically with education in mind. This tough, customizable, and easy-to-use computer helps teachers, and empowers students. See the top 7 reasons why you should choose the X131e for your K-12 classroom.

View the hi-res version of the infographic here:  www.lenovo.com/x131e

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Technology brings classroom experience to distance learners

 Course materials can be downloaded on to mobile devices and accessed by students wherever they are. Photograph: Mike Harrington/Lifesize

Students on the University of Leicester's new distance learning MSc in security, conflict and international development face more challenges than the average distance learner. For example, some students might spend weeks with no access to an internet connection, working in a refugee camp in post-conflict countries. How does the university make sure these remote students have everything they needed to carry out their studies?

"When you're doing that sort of thing, you can't be carrying huge folders of printed material," says Prof Adrian Beck, head of the university's department of criminology. "It struck us that we needed to find a way for them to transport our materials that is highly flexible but low-weight, and gives them access to all the material they will need while on the go."

The solution was to give every student on the course a free iPad, on to which they could download a bespoke app and all the course materials. Despite concerns from the university about security and technical support, the plan has gone smoothly. A few months into the MSc, no iPads have been lost or stolen and students have responded with enthusiasm.

Distance-learning providers already use virtual learning environments (VLEs) to enable students to read documents online, contact tutors, submit coursework, or engage in discussions with other students. But the increasing popularity of smartphones, iPads and Kindles means that universities are now responding to student demand to access those resources from their mobile devices.

The Open University (OU), for example, is developing a new generation of interactive course materials for tablet computers and has just launched OU Anywhere, a tablet and smartphone app that enables students to download all the course materials they need on to their mobile devices. The app also allows users to access the university's VLE to interact with fellow students and tutors. For distance learners, who often struggle to combine studying with full-time work, this provides a new flexibility. Prof Mike Sharples, chair in educational technology at the OU, says mobile devices are ideal for students who want to study during lunchbreaks or quiet moments at work, or on the train home.

As the cost of technology falls, mobile devices become more powerful and cross-platform development becomes simpler, it seems inevitable that universities will start to take mobile devices into account when they design learning resources.

Stuart Sutherland, senior development and delivery manager at the University of Derby Online, which has recently introduced an app to allow mobile access to its VLE, thinks that the advent of free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) is forcing traditional universities to raise their game, and to design content specifically for a mobile environment, such as short videos or podcasts. "The small video explaining a difficult mathematic or scientific phenomenon is always a better way of explaining that than text," says Sutherland. Terese Bird, a learning technologist at the University of Leicester who is evaluating the impact of tablets in distance learning, argues that mobiles can be ideal for bite-sized learning: "One benefit identified by scholars is that if you learn something in short frequent bursts, you may very well be able to learn better than doing a five-hour study spree at the weekend."

Opportunities for social learning open up when students use mobile devices: the OU, for example, plans to allow students to share their e-reader annotations online, and to see which other students are reading the same text and chat online to them about it. The Leicester MSc students have an app that allows them to see where other students on their course are located and make contact with them. They can also make video calls to their tutors in given time slots or they can ask written questions, with the answers then made available to other students. Twitter functionality will be built into the next iteration of the app. As one student, RAF squadron leader Julian Turner, says: "I will often be using a note-taking app, ebook reader app and mind mapping app concurrently when studying."

Mobile devices offer not just convenience and flexibility, but potentially a new way of studying. Equipped with cameras, video and sound recorders, and GPS, they enable students to become creators as well as users of information – by recording a short video for a course assessment, for example. John Traxler, professor of mobile learning at the University of Wolverhampton, says mobile technologies can be used to help undergraduates "think like scientists, to have hypotheses and test them by gathering data in the wild rather than re-enacting what Michael Faraday did 200 years ago".

It may be early days, but the potential for using mobile technologies to transform the experience of distance learning is huge. As Beck says: "Distance learning has gone from being something pretty static and lonely to something that is much more dynamic and interactive, and you can find ways to engage students in a community of learners that was quite difficult to do in the past."

View the original article here

Windows 8 Facilitates Classroom Tablets

In many elementary schools, there is a growing interest in using tablets in addition to, or to replace PCs.  This is very understandable and adding tablets may offer some unique educational capabilities that are very attractive.  Yet, it is still very important to have management, administration, and control over the tablets.  Moving toward individual, unsupervised tablet use may defeat the curriculum goals that are class focused.

Many schools have found that there is a real need for management tools such as Stoneware to insure that students are doing what they should be, in addition to supporting teacher interaction with individuals.  Many school systems have already implemented a solution for classroom management and are having success with it.  This is the key reason I believe that the Windows 8 tablets may represent the best short term option for these school districts.  In this case I’m referring to full Windows 8, as RT versions will require testing.

By staying within the same, known, Windows environment and classroom management tools, during a migration or addition of tablets, the project is simplified.  The truth is that when changes are made to IT infrastructure, whether it’s a school, a business, or any other organization, one of the most important things to remember is that the fewer aspects or elements of the existing solution that are changed, the higher the success rate for the project.  In this way, the major change is limited to the tablet device, and not compounded by adding in a new operating system and classroom management tool.

This makes the migration far easier for teachers and classroom staff.  There is no disruption to the lesson plans and the need for sending staff to training for new IT teaching tools is mitigated as well.  When tablets are added during the school year, using Windows 8 tablets to minimize disruption may be the most important part of the plan.

It’s also worth noting that many of the other procedures that are used for technology in the classroom, such as security, asset tagging, system updates, and other tasks are also consistent across both the Windows PC and tablet.  This makes life far easier for the IT staff that is charged with overall management of the K-12 IT infrastructure.

Staying with the smallest number of key IT platforms is a known best practice.  Already major enterprises have been reducing the number of key IT platforms and vendors they use to drive efficiency.  The same fact set makes platform reduction attractive to the K-12 environment.  Windows 8 tablets are a great way to simplify technology while bringing in the latest form factors.

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