Transformation: making a ruckus
Using digital media in teaching and learning is a new guide that I wrote aimed at people who are curious about how images, video and audio might be applied.
I hope that this guide can act as the first port of call for learning technologists and teachers who aren’t quite yet ready to read about the “how-to” kind of stuff that we are great at.
We explore what digital media is, where it can be used to support teaching and learning and what the key opportunities and challenges are.
Earlier today I joined Craig Taylor to talk about ebooks (digital books) TODAY, in the first of several episodes about our current and emerging thoughts on ebooks.
I think an interesting point from the conversation was about the ‘uniquely digital uses for digital books’ and the fact we haven’t yet scratched the surface of the potential for digital features.
Enjoy
Yesterday I was in London for the first workshop towards the new JISC funded project The challenge of eBooks in academic institutions run by Ken Chad. The two hour session gathered a range of stakeholders to discover what the priorities are for institutions around the creation, curation and consumption of digital books. Here are my notes on the workshop:
Mobile everything has been much hyped over the past few years with figures of device ownership and network activity usage both up, up and away. Within the mobile space, one topic t intrigues me more than others, which is the idea of the digital book, made possible by ebook readers, tablets, computers and software. The NMC Horizon report, an annual look at what’s hot in education and technology has been waving the flag for ebooks since 2010 saying that by 2012 ebooks should be beginning to hit their stride and gaining widespread use. I think they might just be right.
The current digital book is largely relegated to hastily cobbled together editions of existing print books wrapped in an often poorly built PDF file. I can live with this, knowing that there must be light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully not a train) as duplicating print books has been tried, and now we have begun to look at that is next. Whilst I do believe that benefits such as having access to a library at my fingertips, fast searching and 24/7 distribution are great features, those alone are only scratching at the surface of what a digital book could be.
In Post-Artifact Books and Publishing Craig Mod writes:
Suddenly these three sentences thrust what digital books are becoming into the light. I feel it is worth considering each in context of education.
The process used to be be of isolation with author> select reviewers > Publisher > seller. Martin Weller’s 2011 book The Digital Scholar came into being in part from his public blog writing on many of the thoughts and topics that went on to become the book. The comments and statistics could have been one method of seeing what “sticks” to inform the book process. Which was then further honed by his tribe using various social tools.
Over the past year or so I have been following with interest as Gráinne Conole writes Designing for learning in an open world, sharing each chapter of it, using the web to “…act as a space to invite discussion and debate on emergent issues. ”
We are able to use ‘digital’ tools and communications to reach those at whom the book is aimed from day zero. Services like Kickstarter have enabled people to float an idea for a book and get the funding BEFORE day 1.
We now have a countless number of ways to read digital books. From dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle, to tablets such as the Apple iPad, Google Nexus 7 and more mainstream computers and mobile phones with book reading capabilities. These devices along with ‘apps’ let us read on a digital book on a new type of canvas from print.
My current favourite reader is the ibis reader which allows me to upload EPUB books and access them on all my devices and sync the page I am reading so i can effortlessly move from one reading device to the next. At the 2012 Digital Book conference, Liz Daly, creator of ibis reader spoke about the possibility of streaming books becoming a possible future (spotify for ebooks), helping us become file format and device agnostic.
I can imagine a near future where education book release will be “digital by default”, saving print for core texts.
A digital book never has to be complete, like Wikipedia, edits can be made and released with ease. New versions being released as “dot” versions much like how software upgrades are done. Being digital, the book may be discovered by a far greater amount of people, and will be easily distributed via established library catalogues and newer services like Apple iTunes U. Services like Amazon allow you to publicly share your ebook reading lists and highlights, suddenly these unique digital social features might start to find usefulness for education books. Teacher and learner sharing notes on the same books, this opens the door to potential new pedagogical exploration.
I am now reading as many digital books as I am print books and I continue to marvel at the idea of what is coming next.
To copy images from your computer to the nexus 7 you need to drag and drop the photos from your computer across to the photos folder on the tablet.
Notice I said DRAG, it won’t allow you to copy and paste, hopefully this gets fixed as it is annoying!
If you are using a Mac, first you need to install Android File Transfer which will automatically pop up when connected to the tablet.
Today marks my first ever edit to Wikipedia and I thought i’d mark the occasion with this post as a reminder.
I am in the process of creating an ebook from M.R. James short ghost stories, starting with ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’. I am using a print edition as the blueprint and noticed that the Wikipedia entry was inaccurate in two places: the title of Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book should be lowercase ‘b’ and ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ was missing an ‘,’ after Whistle… i know!
Proof of my edits are immortalised in the Wikipedia entry revision log.
I now join an even rarer level of N*E*R*D (which itself is a reference…)
Welcome to 100 things about digital publishing in education. Join me as I discover how learners, staff and institutions make and use digital books for traditional and emerging practices. Lets explore what is unique about ‘digital publishing’ from the view of the people affected. I believe it is an interesting topic and hope 100 things will inform and inspire more of you to try digital publishing and ebooks. If you would like to contribute or heckle, please do get in touch as I’d love to hear your views.
The Heritage Lottery Fund has just announced new policy and requirements for projects from July 2012.
IT Services R&D /ILRT including myself had a hand in producing the new requirements and it is great to see positive feedback on this move to allow digital only projects with the HLF. We quietly worked on the guidance and delivered a series of workshops around the UK to HLF staff. Something that I am really proud of is that all projects will be using Creative Commons Licensing which we hope will enable new uses and help prove better value for use of public money.
idpf have just released all of the session recordings and slides.
At IDPF Digital Book 2012 you’ll hear about the latest business and technical developments in the rapidly evolving digital publishing industry.
Of particular interest was the recording of Liza Daly’s ‘streaming ebooks‘ session which is well worth a listen.
JISC have released the results of a 3 year study into my generation (Y) research studying behaviour.
Our research findings reveal:
- Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (eg journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (eg primary archival material and large datasets).
- Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic.
- Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for Generation Y doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research.
- This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.
- Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.
These findings raise important questions about research development, training and support within research led organisations and the openness and sharing of research.
I say WHY are things the way they are.