Bonae Famae

A Twitter sceptic writes

2009-02-02T02:59:00.000-08:00

When Twitter began - or soon after - it was quite a dull place to be unless you had an interest in the fantasies of teenagers in California or Korea ... or indeed were a teenager in California or Korea.
In the intervening months, we've been getting our heads around using networking sites for learning - and there are all sorts of questions that aren't answered by the inevitable enthusiasms of the the zealots.
On the one hand, it seems pretty clear that Twitter is a good tool for following a conference or lecture or whatever - here's an experiment at the Oxford Media Convention earlier this year. It's also good for link alerts and shares ... probably slightly better than dedicated link sharing tools because of the 'here/now' side of it. So we're giving that a go with a College of Journalism account and a hashtag to pull together tweets from other accounts that college users might want to share.
On the other: how do you measure whether this is a learning success?

Tufts wikisyllabus for digital democracy

2009-01-21T10:19:00.000-08:00

This is really, really interesting ... and will be great to follow over the coming months.
It's a syllabus/wiki combo of Tufts University's new digital democracy course.
I'm looking forward to the way in which a reasonably traditional looking course structure will be realised on the wiki. I might even follow the course in real time - doing the reading, linking, thinking on the days the 'real' students will be focusing on them.
Intrigued how much of a learning experience it could be ... and how different from a more informal link/browse/link/browse learning as grazing experience.

We've officially started .. really

2009-01-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

I've been hesitating before writing on this blog.

As Web Manager for the BBC's College of Journalism website I have the responsibility of turning editor Kevin Marsh's vision of a public facing learning facility for BBC journalists and journalists across the world into a reality.

In practise that means getting the designers in with their pots of paint and chaining a handful of technical staff to their desks. Their goal is simple. Make us a website.

Simple, isn't it? Come up with some page designs and code them up for us. We'll put them into Movable Type and we'll (magically) do the rest.

That's what all good producers and project managers do, you see. We simplify things so that we can handle the idea better. Large scale projects with multiple stakeholders and a ridiculously large budget are always made easier to consider in the early hours of the morning if they're reduced to bite-sized chunks (although I might add that this project doesn't have either). Sometimes we simplify things so very much we're left wondering whether there's any work to do at all.

In truth, there are relatively straightforward elements to making the College website public. The site is already rich with content, content crafted by people who have enormous amounts of knowledge and experience gained over many years in the journalism trade.

Such is the amount of experience and knowledge to be shared, the site currently residing on the BBC's internal network is vast. It's grown larger than the original scope of the project and thus it is, in places, a little unwieldly.

Consequently, what feels like the majority of the intensive work required in making the site public has already been completed. Over the past couple of weeks, Kevin, myself and Information Architect Rachel have locked ourselves away in a meeting room with nothing more than large pieces of paper, big fat marker pens and post-it notes. We've discussed, debated, postulated and pontificated. From time to time we've stood around the circular table in the middle of the room as though we're planning an invasion.

The output (those of us with a project manager background love 'inputs' and 'outputs') has been impressive: a revised architecture, a strict set of mandatory tags, a stripped down set of categories and an all important set of rules for when we publish publically.

It was the results of our discussions we offered up to our designers and coders this afternoon for their consideration. During that meeting I saw a great deal of note-taking, not to mention a great deal of "So, just to confirm .. you want it to do this?" Such things are encouraging and reassuring.

Websites get launched every single day, an increasing number of them utilising Movable Type as the publishing platform. Still it excites me to think that we are now underway.

This ship has set sail. And it shouldn't be long before it docks in port.

So what's a lecture anyhow?

2009-01-13T07:37:00.001-08:00

Interested by this article at the New York Times - 'At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard'. Which means, I guess, the bin.
The negative attitude - of both experts and learners - to 'lectures' (or indeed anything that looks and feels like formal learning) is one of the parameters we have to deal with at CoJo. It's true, that even the most formal looking sessions (which, though formal, stop a long way short of what I recognise by the word 'lecture') tend win learners over in the end ... all the same, the idea of something 'formal' is an initial barrier. And while a college with full-time students might just about get away with it (but shouldn't), the last thing we can afford to offer time-poor, stressed, in-career potential learners is something that they think will mean a lot of listening.
MIT's change to "smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning" for its introduction isn't exactly an educational revolution nor is the insight that "most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning." But it's interesting that even within a context where you might expect a formal approach ... it's now judged less effective than the alternative.

Wholly trinity

2009-01-13T02:27:00.000-08:00

When we talk about making 'the CoJo website' public, it's slightly misleading - mostly because it won't be a single site.
We'll be using Movable Type as our content production and management system. It'll be used to produce both blogs (though we won't call them that ... I know, I know) and stuff that is recognisbly online learning. Alongside that content, though, we'll use third party networking tools.
For the learner, it will feel to the user like a single site ... but it'll be three 'entities' each of which will have fuzzy edges.
Why are we doing it this way?
Well partly because we're starting from where we are and with the ambition that we have ... and somehow we have to weave the two together. Actually, this is more opportunity than challenge. A few years ago, we'd have built a couple of dozen interactive 'howto' modules in Flash with a 'how have you done?' test at the end and bingo. Everybody happy. No evidence, of course, that any of the learning would have made the slightest difference to anyone ... but learners would have done it, a box would have a tick in it etc etc. Now we know different - we know more about how career journalists learn and how they want to learn; we know the value of informal learning and networking. Ideally, we'd start from there - using powerful informal learning tools. But that's not how organisations work. For understandable reasons, organisations - especially publicly accountable ones - like tangible stuff, auditable stuff, stuff that shows compliance.
So, the answer we've come up with is a trinitarian one which offers learners different routes to that learning but which, crucially, allows shared informal learning from blogs and networking to develop more built learning. A bit like this:

The other important feature of our learning offer - which is there in the graphic - is that for the most part, the way into that learning is via some kind of awareness/alert. 'This is an issue' or 'this is a dilemma' or 'this is difficult' etc. We'll then pack around that deepening layers of reference ... from quick tips, advice and how-tos through interactive walk-throughs and top-level briefings to deep reference ... to which we will link out, naturally.

The languages of journalism

2009-01-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

We're expecting to make the CoJo (BBC College of Journalism) website visible this spring - however, some of our work is already available on BBC World Service sites.
The BBC World Service broadcasts in 33 languages, including English and over the past year, CoJo has been producing basic guides to journalistic language in each of these - language that reflects the BBC journalistic values of Truth and Accuracy, Impartiality, Independence, Public Interest and Accountability. They're aimed at all journalists who speak, write in, broadcast in those languages ... and in many cases there's been nothing of this kind before.
Check out the eleven so far completed here:
French for Africa
Swahili
Arabic
Azeri
Kyrgyz
Uzbek
Indonesian
Pashto
Russian
Urdu
Chinese
Next, the south Asians, Spanish and Portuguese - by April, all 32 languages (excliding English) will have CoJo language content.

Learning styles

2009-01-10T03:15:00.000-08:00

I missed this turn of the year post first time round. It's on consultant and writer Clark Quinn's 'Learnlets' blog.
Extract:

"if, instead of fixed characteristics, we think of a suite of malleable learning competencies as a way in which our learners can differ, we gain two things. First, we find ways we can support learners who have weaknesses in particular learning competencies (dealing with visual data representations, for example), and second, we can develop them in those competencies as well ... It’s also a tangible investment in organizational competency, and potentially the only real leverage an organization can have, going forward. Think: learning skills instead of learning styles, and develop your learners accordingly!"

Build for real people

2009-01-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

One of our toughest tasks is user testing; for two reasons.
First, that it's never easy to test something that's different from what people are already using - especially something, like an intelligencing network, that's conceptual. All user feedback is useful ... but it can be frustrating when the user is focusing on issues you're not testing and doesn't find particularly comprehensible - for all sorts of valid reasons for which, don't misunderstand me, I don't blame them - the issues you are testing.
So, for instance, if a user participating in a test just can't see how Facebook or Ning could ever be a learning tool, it's a bit awkward to move onto the 'how' and 'what would you do with this' questions.
The second reason, though, is more complex - though connected with the first. As you move through the user testing, you find out not just what people want - or are able to visualise or realise it - but also where they're starting from technologically. And from time to time. it can make you re-think your starting points.
Example: one of our producers was doing the intro spiel to a testing session and hit the 'minimize' button on the browser to disappear one window and move on to the one beneath.
"How did you do that ???" one of the guinea pigs asked, genuinely amazed.
Example: we were user testing an online course - I don't like 'online courses' as a rule but sometimes in organisations producing them is the line of least resistance. The front page offered several ways of cutting the content - including a 'Browse' button.
"What does 'browse' mean ??"
Example: in the same online course, some of the content was too long for the window so the developer had put a scrollbar down the right hand side of the window.
"This text goes off the bottom."
"You can use the scrollbar."
"What's a scrollbar."
Now I'm not sharing these examples to humiliate these users or ask 'would you believe it?' These were authentic reactions and it's our job to take them seriously and at face value. And the lesson of that is that even within a technologically mature organisation such as the BBC, the individual experience of that technology is not even. And that as producers and developers of online learning materials we have to take into account that uneven experience.
We geeks find it much easier to build stuff for other geeks. The big lesson from all of this is - build for real people.

Where not to go???

2009-01-10T02:35:00.000-08:00

One of the problems any site builder has - especially someone building a learning site - is that you're working now in January 2009 to design something that can be or evolve to be something that will still feel good in January 2011.
So Stephen Downes' post - "What not to build" - caught my attention.

Anyway ...

2009-01-10T02:15:00.000-08:00

... the point of all of this is to write about some of the thinking (and I guess successes and failures) in our latest eLearning project.
For about two years now, we've been running an internal-only learning website for BBC journalists; CoJo (College of Journalism ... see?) online. It's become big over time - around 200 videos, 3,000 pages, several dozen slef-test or try-it-an-see interactive units - and features BBC journalists, their skills and experiences, on the basis that the BBC has some of the best journalsits in the world - so why not share those skills and experiences in a learning environment.
In the spring, this site - or more accurately, a new site based on current content - will be going public; free to UK users, part free to non-UK users. And we have two modest aims - to ensure its the best journalism learning site in the world; and to ensure it uses as many modes of elearning as possible, using the right mode for the right user and the right content.
Building a site like this - which in spite of being externally visible will still be uncompromsiingly by BBC journalists for BBC journalists - within an organisation like the BBC presents unique challenges; I wrote about some of them here on my other blog.
But like anyone involved in elearning, I'm trying to absorb, test and share as many ideas as possible about learning, about the web, about web X.x etc etc.
And that's what this blog is about. Part show and tell; part HELP ME ....

Here's a strange thing ...

2008-11-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

For all sorts of quite dull reasons, I've moved over to this address.

Why the Latin ? Well, it all comes from the one word "quaecumque" - there was, a couple of lifetimes ago, a proposal that it should be the one word slogan of the BBC.

It never caught ... though the key phrases from Paul's epistle to the Philippians - Vulgate version ... see left - figure in the aspirational text (thankfully untranslated into English) in the marbled, art deco foyer of Broadcasting House.

"TEMPLUM HOC ARTIUM ET MUSARUM ANNO DOMINI MCMXXXI RECTORE JOHANNI REITH PRIMI DEDICANT GUBERNATORES PRECANTES UT MESSEM BONAM BONA PROFERAT SEMENTIS UT IMMUNDA OMNIA ET INIMICA PACI EXPELLANTUR UT QUAECUNQUE PULCHRA SUNT ET SINCERA QUACUNQUE BONAE FAMAE AD HAEC AVREM INCLINANS POPULUS VIRTUTIS ET SAPIENTIAE SEMITAM INSISTAT."

It means 'whatsoever' ... but with overtones of '....soever' - Houellebecq ? Nah.

Oh. The other thing is this. By chance, I typed 'quaecumque bbc' into Google ... and guess what ?

Correct.

Cool or what ?