Learn 4 Life Podcast

This month we talk with Robin Ball, Learning Services Manager of BECTA, about the Learning Platform Spec, open source, interoperability, pedagogy, training, NAACE and local services.

Prior to joining Becta, Robin spent a number of years seconded from a Midlands university providing educational support for the development and deployment of learning platform technologies. He also workedalongside a number of local authorities and regional broadband consortia creating commissioned digital content.

For the past two years he has worked as Becta’s Learning Services Manager, responsible for the development of advice and guidance relating to learning platforms. Robin is a qualified primary teacher.

You can hear the interview here. We apologise for the quality of the interview but we were Skyping Robin on his mobile phone to hands free in his car before a meeting at BECTA.

This podcast was sponsored by Pteppic.net – the number one UK partner for Moodle.

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Nearing the very end of BETT - in the last half an hour I came upon an Early Years Learning Platform.Nina Garforth, and her assistants Abigail Wells and Heather McDougall, gave me a whistlestop tour of the product. It's fairly unique in that it is for the Primary School and, as you can see, even a 3 year old can send an email!

KOWARI has also had a lot of interest from special needs teachers.

If you want a simple and very clear VLE for younger children then this is it.

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Doug Dickinson has a wealth of experience in the ICT community over many years. Here is one good reason why commercial firms need a consultant like him to come up with the idea for this - Podium from Softease is so simple, practical and easy to understand you know at once it will be perfect for use in the classroom.Podcasting is the buzzword of the moment and in this short interview and demonstration, Doug shows one particular feature of Podium which I think is outstanding:the ability to colour code text script to sound files and edit them on the fly in a podcast.

In a busy classroom Podium is exactly the sort of tool a teacher needs.

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Drew Buddie has been using Moodle in his school for years. He is a passionate Moodle evangelist and if you want to see what a fully populated mature Moodle looks like in the flesh go to his school site at the Royal Masonic School.

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We talked with a very tired Sean Keogh late on Friday at BETT 2007 – he'd obviously been doing a lot of business. He runs the most experienced Moodle Hosting and Services company in the UK pteppic.net.

Although Moodle is free to download and use, the allied services are what are important in maintaining a realistically secure and strategic position for your school or LA.

Sean has organised the MoodleMoot conference for UK Moodlers for the last 3 years (this year it will be Jason Cole's turn to take on the mantle).

Pteppic.net hosts and maintains over 50 schools' Moodles – you can read some of the list of clients here.

Even though Moodle is not on the BECTA preferred list of Learning Platform suppliers, schools can still use money earmarked for that to buy in Moodle Services. pteppic.net has the longest and most experienced history of maintaining Moodle in this country and was the first Moodle partner.

If you want safe, secure data and a bespoke solution for your Moodle's needs Sean is one of the people with the most expertise in the business.

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Ray Lawrence is one of the most generous people I know for giving advice and information on the Moodle forums over the years – he is an official Moodle partner and has many years experience going back to 2002.

He has got countless schools up to speed with Moodle over that time and here explains his business HowToMoodle.

If you want a quick and efficient way of getting your school up to scratch with Moodle, Ray has face to face training onsite or at centres and online courses to help you.

He also explains the concept of the Moodle development, to which he contributes royalties from his business to make it a sustainable model for the future.

Ray is typical of many people in the Moodle community in that he believes passionately in the difference he is making. He has an immense amount of expertise and is always one of the first people I would call on to help.

No amount of corporate business expertise can buy in this engagement and involvement. Don’t take my word for it, go to his HowToMoodle site and see for yourself and read the comments from schools.

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Terry talks about his presentation at BETT 2007. His role in presenting for NAACE.

You can read the document he prepared with colleagues Janet Roberts and Russell Ingleby

http://www.naace.org/resource.asp?menuItemId=7&resourceId=1597

Terry also recorded it as a podcast, the link to which may be found here:

http://www.ictineducation.org/naace

He also pointed us to two excellent resources he'd seen:

the Softease Podium Podcasting software

and

2simple's 2Paint a Picture.

He also discusses his own personal projects involving podcasting at his own site:

http://www.terryfreedman.com.

And, of course Terry was far too modest to talk abothe editing of the new Coming of Age Web 2.0 book 2 which is encyclopaedic in its coverage of use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. Probably the most definitive guide in the world.

Terry works exceptionally hard – he's the only other person I know whose SKYPE is on and active at 3 am in the morning!

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I talked with Dan Sutch to see some of the latest projects and developments from Futurelab. As usual we could have talked all afternoon and it was late on the Saturday after a long show and Dan highlighted two projects involving mobile devices:

Fizzees – (Physical Electronic Energisers) is a prototype project that enables young people to care for a ‘digital pet’ through their own physical actions. In order to nurture their digital pet, keep it healthy and grow, young people must themselves act in physically healthy ways.

and

Createascape – Dan talks about the concept of Mediascapes which are a collection of location-sensitive sounds and images that are placed in local landscapes that can then be experienced via a PDA hand-held computer and headphones.

Both projects highlight the real to virtual and vice versa – the augmentation of reality and the extensibility of real life by use of mobile devices. As Dan points out when talking about the Futurelab publication What if in the context of BSF – these devices can be used to extend and augment the built environment already there or enable the learner to move among the landscape in different imaginative scenarios freeing them up from traditional learning spaces. John Davitt has a few ideas on BSF and tools for teachers too if you care to listen.

Lastly Dan talks about the new Call for Ideas – the current theme is called Innovative Tools for Future Teaching and is open from 22 January until 2 March 2007.

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Ian Usher is the E-Learning Co-ordinator for Bucks County Council. We asked him about innovation at the BETT 2007 show, the various things he had seen; he talked about the learning platform spec, Bucks use of Moodle, Atomwide, Adobe Connect and their implementation and dissemination at local level in Bucks. He also touched on pedagogy, e-portfolios and communities of use.The Bucks Grid for Learning website is a prime example of a well thought out strategic implementation of a Learning Platform. It's ongoing, innovative and increasingly popular - and it works!Ian is one of those rare people who not only has the vision but also the pragmatism to understand that to make e-learning happen takes time and perseverance to win hearts and minds - much of what he is doing is highly innovative and world beating. We need someone like him in every LA: listen to the interview, read his blog and click on the Bucks links above for more info.

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We interviewed Margaret Wallace and Paul Mathews about EPICT and the unique place it has on the ICT training map.The emphasis is not on skills but pedagogy and it is highly embedded in practice in schools in the UK. It has a proven track record since 2000 and is one of the options headteachers should consider post SLICT training for their staff to embed good use of pedagogy using ICT within the curriculum.Its unique emphasis on how to use best pedagogical practice and embed it into the school, via the use of facilitators and in-house or external training centres for certification, is one solution that may well appeal to heads in all key stages looking for a local and proven way of offering expertise and quality CPD to their staff.