I saw my first Great Whale!

I've never seen a Great Whale with my own eyes before and on 18 August 2019 it was a dream come true!  For those that don't know me, I am a massive animal and natural history lover and have a significant passion for }-wh^ale>.  They're mysterious and magnificent creatures and ones I have a strong spiritual connection to, which led me to getting an Orca tattoo on my leg to honour my passion for cetaceans.  And yes I know Orca is a dolphin not a whale but it's still a cetacean.  😉

Whilst holidaying in Madeira I collected a number of leaflets of local whale and dolphin trips, as well as being informed of the hotel (TUI) excursions.  I settled for Ventura Nature Emotions.  I've done many 'family boat trips' so I felt that this one was the best to get me closer to seeing whales.  This company is purely focused on searching for cetaceans and had a marine biologist on board that knew species and their behaviours.

Our skipper was told by the inland spotter that a whale was sighted, I felt a bit numb.  Out comes Bryde's whale, not one but two, a mother and a calf.  I know they are often sighted at this time of year, but it's not guaranteed, as wildlife tends to be.  I was hoping to see one during the trip and I got my dream come true.  Incredible experience that I’ll never forget.  On our trip we also saw spotted dolphins, a 50+ group and a smaller juvenile group, a couple of loggerhead sea turtles and a flying fish.

Excuse the expletives, I was just overwhelmed.  A tough task as I had to record and nurse a sea sick Gary.  Here's a short video of my first and long awaited experience of seeing a Great Whale!  Now I have the taste to see more in the wild...  As always, recordings don’t give the experience justice – the Bryde’s whales were closer than it looked.

Video thumbnail by Gary Purdy.

Mapping Learning Technology handbook to Level 4 Award in Teaching Online

In January 2019, I was invited by Paul Bacsich from Sero Consulting Ltd to review the approved new qualification Level 4 Award in Teaching Online, offered through ATHE – Awards for Training and Higher Education.  Additionally, Paul asked how the qualification units map into my book 'Learning Technology: A Handbook for FE Teachers and Assessors'.  As it was considered as a resource to support learners on the qualification.  As part of our conversations I said I would produce a mapping of my book's content to the qualification.  Below is the output of this.

ALT Annual Conference 2019

A collection of findings and thoughts throughout my first experience Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference 2019...

After propelling (literally) my way up, I've arrived in my beloved historical city Edinburgh! Here for @A_L_T's Annual Conference. Excited and nervous, be kind to me! Presenting tomorrow at the place I'm pointing at on '...purposeful technology...' blah blah blah. Grub now.  Nerves are truly here. Anyway... If you see me at #altc whether I know you or not, do say hi! Faces to names and all that.

Note for self: some Tweets link to threads with further discussion.

Day 1

• Sue Beckingham keynote - Revisiting the affordances and consequences of digital interconnectedness and socially mediated publicness
• Sue Beckingham - Here is my #altc keynote presentation: Revisiting the affordances and consequences of digital interconnectedness and socially mediated publicness
• Future developments informed by the past.  A useful way to reflect on what was, has been and what's to come.
• Douglas Adams - 'Learn to love the internet': http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html
• Dr Sarah Copeland - @suebecks taking us on a journey of imagined past concerns of technology and known applications of it today. The smart home and IOT has led to teens talking to smart fridges as a means of outer communication
• Dark web vs deep web.  The dark web is what we should be concerned about.  On the deep web things are hidden for good reason, e.g. banking, personal information
• Dystopian and utopian views
• Panoptican - being watched without knowing
• ALT - @suebecks In the panopticon you never know if you're being watched or not watched.  Who is taking and using our data?
• Emily Armstrong - Some scary thoughts about data, surveillance and eSafety by @suebecks at #altc although if my TV/smart speaker is listening to me, does that make it more attentive than my boyfriend?
• Suzanne Faulkner - @suebecks highlighting innovative use of smart devices 🙈🤣...... on a serious note ...... how much do we know about what happens to our data? What technology do you have on your house capturing data about you?
• Surveillance, monitoring and collecting.  Overcome it: sousveillance - surveilling and the surveillers
• Happens in classroom - students recording and posting on social media
• Elaine Swift - @suebecks talking about sousveillance - who watches the watchmen
• Me - I'm getting @blackmirror 'Nosedive' episode vibes. Not too far away from this as a reality. Do we challenge it, stop it or let it happen? What's better?
• Me - Do you feel that we are to blame for a lot of this data distrust happening in the first place? Did we get too excited by technology and the idea that it was 'free'? Well, we're now waking up, mostly through recent politics.
• Alicia Owen - Important points to think about from @suebecks in her #altc keynote. Chasm between technology and corporate culture - what is possible vs what is done. Important for @ucisadcg #digitalcapabilities - need to think about all of these things in terms of digital wellbeing & identity
• Me - Here here! 👏 Exactly my thoughts right now, linking to what I just said: https://twitter.com/_Daniel_Scott/status/1168817601625165824
• Peter Bryant - Literacies are simply bits of knowledge if they don't have context and location.  Providing problems and challenges and spaces for where literacies can be discovered and transferred is far more critical
• Maren Deepwell - Really inspired by @suebecks exploring how what is said, what is not safe s and how it is said on social media - so relevant to the work we do
• Suzanne Faulkner - @suebecks asks us: what are we doing to build ethical literacy and trust with our students? ...... we all need to continue learning new literacies
• Me - Setting boundaries is the key and knowing the consequences. It is for many things in life. Look at us now on Twitter, addiction or not? A lot of this comes back to 'are we consumers or producers?' 
• Suzanne Faulkner - @suebecks asks us to encourage our students to use the S.H.A.R.E checklist
• Miss G - Conveying emotion online can be done. Emoji markup of Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions
• Peter Bryant - Connecting is critical. Knowing why you need to connect is even more important. Knowing how to help others to find out the same is where education truly empowers.  Just connecting is like driving from point A to point B and not really seeing what is outside 
• Me - Well done @suebecks  on your keynote, a great way to start the conference with such a personal and challenging topic on data and surveillance, which affects us all.
• Given the theme of data in the title of the theme of the conference, there was lots mentions about learning analytics central to and for students to support their learning, achievement and progression.
• Yi-Shan Tsai, Dragan Gaševi, Alexander Whitelock-Wainwright, Pedro J and Muñoz-Merino - Working towards a systemic adoption of learning analytics – stakeholder expectations and concerns
• SHEILA project
• To make data informed decisions
• What can learning analytics do for the organisation as well as students?
• Teachers like to use for... student, teacher, and program levels
• Student e.g. identify flaws and strengths
• Students overwhelmed with information
• Predicting grades better, identifying learning gaps
• Managers concerns - Return On Investment (ROI), resources, skills and culture
• Student concerns - how it is interpreted, privacy, ethics, labelled, unfair treatment in assessments
• Sarah Knight, Mark Langer-Crame and Ruth Drysdale - A data driven approach to student engagement
• Jisc Insights survey outcomes - key messages:
• 1. The digital lives of learners: 
• Lack of ownership/access to technology limits learning 
• BYOD is more than just providing access to Wi-Fi 
• Assistive technology is for everyone 
• Staff confidence is an important enabler 
• 2. Digital in the institution 
• Get the basics right 
• Provide good quality digital resources 
• Second most important concern for HE students is access to quality academic content 
• Provide a variety of support options and signpost these well 
• Actively promote health , wellbeing and online safety
• 3.  Digital at course level
• Embed digital skills through curriculum design
• Ensure they know what digital skills they need to have before they start and provide opportunities to develop these only online
• Raise awareness of the importance of digital skills - clear articulation and alignment of study and workplace practices throughout learning
• 4. Student attitudes to digital
• Make it easy for learning to be a part of everyday life
• Make learning interactive and engaging
• Involve students
• Make a lot of assumptions without using evidence based approaches
• ROI - are we investing in the right places
• Mobile devices a key tool that students use, digital divide issues still to be addressed.  FE - recording notes etc.  HE - accessing recorded lectures and notes
• Clare Killen, Drew McConnell and Derek Robertson - The value of an evidence-based approach to creating a digitally enabled organisation
• Money being spent on digital are getting what we want from it?
• HE students use more mobiles devices than FE.  Access to mobile devices are an issue.
• They're all using the Jisc insights survey to get data then using it to improve services and inform future developments.
• Me - 🤔 Amongst the apps, tools etc that #FE and #HE students are using, Google and MS Word are amongst the most popular. There are many more purposeful apps and tools to support specific learning types. We need to model more varieties for students to make an informed choices.
• Drew:
• Creating staff and student partnerships
• Student interns to interpret data
• Steering groups
• Derek:
• Focused theirs on digital learning
• New specification for VLE and improvements
• Student voice informed business case
• Informed future developments of learning technology, i.e. lecture capture, classroom technology - design and interaction opportunities, study spaces
• "Students agreed that digital skills were important for their chosen career (FE: 49%, HE: 70%) but the numbers of those who feel prepared for the digital workplace are lower (FE: 40% , HE: 42%)". From @Jisc.
• Me - Possible reason - confusion, lack of clarity and purposefulness of skills and locations.  I've always said about making digital visible not an invisible skill.
• My session - Exploring purposeful technology as a philosophy to approach the effective use of Technology Enhanced Learning
• Russ Brookes - Teachers/Lecturers need more opportunities to fail. Cannot agree with this enough, everything has to be right 100% of the time and this makes us revert to type. You learn more from your mistakes than your do your successes
• Thanks for everyone's contributions. Will share them here and on the session link.
• ALT session link

Day 2

• Jesse Strommel keynote - Critical Pedagogy, Civil Disobedience and Edtech
• Presentation.
• Jesse Strommel - The majority of development in edtech is driven by the bureaucratic traditions of education more than the pedagogical ones.  The slides from my #altc keynote this morning in Scotland.
• Jesse Strommel - closet introvert, and managed to do his work, but has been taught to be an extrovert to carry out some aspects
• Don't become programmed by digital - find a happy medium with all of the edtech, data compromise etc.
• Lots of questions than answers, all of which lead us to critical digital pedagogy.
• ALT - @jessifer My daughter is learning for herself, not learning for anyone else.  I have a lot to learn about learning from her.  We need to pay more attention to the invisible signs of learning. We need to be better at using our human processes to do this.
• Karoline Nanfeldt - @Jessifer: I’m sure you have systems to find at risk students. Well, I’m going to argue that we should use our human system more to find and help students. Could not agree more - systems can help but not replace.
• ALT - @jessifer What is critical pedagogy?  Pedagogy is perched at the intersection of philosophy and practice.  This is a constant process, this meeting of theory and the work of teaching.
• Sue Beckingham - Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention
• Matt Cornock - Critical pedagogy is not about recepticals of learning, but dialogue, context - @Jessifer (yup, represents my view too)
• Elaine Swift - It's about bringing yourself to teaching and modelling the critical behaviours you are wanting students to develop for themselves in their own way
• Russ Brookes - @Jessifer talkes about the importance of finding your own pedagogy. Very thought provoking talk so far.
• Dr Julie Voce - @Jessifer asks How does critical pedagogy translate into digital space? Can the necessary reflective dialogue flourish within web-based tools/social media/VLE? How can we build platforms that support learning across age, race, gender, culture, ability, geography?
• Me - Ties in nicely with yesterday's keynote and discussions on data and surveillance.
• ALT - @jessifer The very nature of teaching means replacing teachers with machines is impossible but still there is a fear of the mechanism of education.
• ALT - @jessifer There is a fear teachers will become mere facilitators, ground up by the machine, to keep the automatic teaching machine going.
• Chris Jobling - Critical tool evaluation
• Me - Not surprised to see that many of us don't read terms of conditions, service etc. We've got too complacent. As I said yesterday, we need to wake up! Otherwise we are at risk of being owned, programmed...
• Terese Bird - Yes -- students sometimes are not yet woke to the issues of their material being possibly taken, their privacy being breached. It's my job to be aware of these perils but not sure how far I need to go to 'wake' students.
• Sarah Faulkner - @Jessifer defines critical digital pedagogy and encourages us to remember “we are working with students not data assets”
• Me - Yes! But most importantly, are the right people involved in that decision making process? I don't just mean at the end of it, but at the start of the discussions!
• Me - A theme coming out of @Jessifer's keynote is, how much do we talk to our students about the #edtech issues we experience as educators?
• Suzanne Stone - Turn and face the strange, ch-ch-changes: Are traditional change management models still relevant in educational technology?
• Good session on what we can learn from technical acceptance models https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_acceptance_model
• Technology acceptance model (TAM) - version 2 of it, added factors influencing perceived usefulness
• Version 3 - with Venkatesh and Bala 2008
• Practically - provides a framework for planning the introduction of TEL and TEL related projects
• Reminds me of Bennett's work with TEL access and belief
• Chris Melia - Some interesting questions for our colleagues @UCLan... Looking at barriers to TEL adoption in practice 💡
• Group activity based on a recent change management TEL project.  What were the barriers experienced?  What do you anticipate as the barriers for this project?  Are these barriers the same that you faced 5 years ago?  10 Years ago?
• Senior managers not having the adequate understanding make these TEL implementations work
• A lot of change doesn't always come from the teacher but the institution
• Pace of change different from technological (Wi-Fi etc) from TEL.  TEL is faster but infrastructure barriers are still same.
• In model, communication and purpose at centre is missing
• John Couperthwaite - Connectivism in contemporary curricula: new opportunities for student-centred learning practices
• Unconnected learning - spaces, activities, learners, teachers
• more than 95% of people owning personal devices
• Creation of 'hy-flex' courses to support all learners
• Intelligent campus - initiative to monitor learning/learner analytics
• Institutional moves to 'active blended learning'
• Opt out culture for lecture capture
• Activity - discuss barriers to connecting learning experiences for learners.  We said confidence and coaching and mentoring.  How DigiLearn is operates in supporting one and another and Chris mediating
• Activity - what one thing could you do to improve the connected learning experience of your students? We said not giving students lots of tech choices, ground rules, weaving in the technologies at the right time of the pedagogy.  Upskilling students first before using anything.  Working with students to design the connections, co-design.
The goal - create flexible learning pathways across work spaces and learning environments
• Joe Wilson - Great session from @johncoup around new practices for networked learning #Altc around how we use data to make better decisions see work of Dr Louise Robson Sheffield University ,Michael Seery Edinburgh , Rod Digges UCL
• Gilly Salmon and John Brindle - Creating Education 4.0
• John Brindle - Here are the outputs from @gillysalmon and mine's talk at #altc. Please continue to add if the mood takes you! I'll look at summarising the discussions soon :-)
• Dom Pates - The room is full for ⁦@gillysalmon⁩ and ⁦@johnbrindletel⁩’s workshop on ‘Creating Education 4.0’ at #ALTc (but I’m behind a pillar)...
• https://padlet.com/brindlej/w1no5rskuuvw
• Foresight considering the past, present and future
• Foresight leads from alternative futures to...
• Working with emerging futures.
• Upword connection - connecting to inspiration, sparks of intuition and intent
• Horizon connection  - listening to the feedback from the context
• Downward or local connection - engaging in and learning from locally embedded fast-cycle connections
• How to be part of the future rather than letting it pass by
• Boundary shift
• Individual at centre
• School/dept
• Faculty
• Institution
• Sector
• To innovate, we need to be boundary shifts, need to get people to move boundaries outside not inwards.
• Group chat, on making the change. - Need a rationale for change, evidencing the benefits, nobody wants to be the guinea pig - in response to reluctant adoption, no TEL strategy, internal politics
• Reshape the curriculum and the mode of learning from now to enable future students to make their best contribution to and benefit from education 4.0.
• Padlet activity with the hats
• Main summary - what are we doing it for - the role of universities etc to lectures.
• Chris Meila and Kevan Williams - DigiLearn: A model for the development of technology-enhanced practice
• External and internal understanding of what is meant by digital capabilities (who did they speak to get approval, sign off etc?)
• People - investment in technology, staff and capability
• Place- environment, classroom, office, library
• Practice - pedagogy, practice, professional working practices
• Continually evolving model to involve more people and roles
• Launch of faculty based pilot in Health and Wellbeing (Chris Melia's post)
• Collation and sharing of best TEL practice - dissemination and capture case studies
• Fostering community of TEL practitioners
• Raising digital capabilities of staff
• The DigiLearn Model
• 3 levels they work thorough for recognition
• Use Flipgrid for DigiBuddies and mentors - helps identify folk and personalised
• Links to HEA for more value added and buy in
• Me - Brilliant session on raising staff #digitalcapabilities via the influential #DigiLearnSector by @ChrisLearnTech and @k9williams from @UCLanTELT. Inspirational work, well done. 👏
• Me - What @knanfeldt said in thread below... Check out @UCLanTELT's (@ChrisLearnTech and @k9williams) #digitalcapability work and join the #DigiLearnSector community.
• Debbie Holley and David Biggins - Reimagining teaching practice: Results and recommendations from a three year programme to promote technological innovation in academic staff
• David Bigigins - Re-imagining teaching practice
• Me - Inspiring and empowering work on 're-imagining teaching practice' showcased by @DebbieHolley1 and David Biggins. Lots of great examples on raising and developing #digitalcapabilities of staff.

Congratulations to all the winners and runners-up tonight on their @A_L_T awards. 👏 A pleasure to learn about all your unique projects and efforts. It's events like this that make feel proud to have committed and maintained my career in #edtech.

Enjoyed last night a lot. 😊 Met and had great chats with @mariekeguy, Jackie Carter, an overdue face-to-face introduction to @gillysalmon, then met up with a fab team, @ChrisLearnTech, @k9williams and @colette_fuller - great to meet you all, safe journey back guys.

Day 3

• Ollie Bray keynote - Learning, Teaching and Technology
• Presentation
• Me - Making our Lego duck was a good reminder of how being playful can be a key component of bringing fun and playfulness to learning.
• ALT - @olliebray I really like cycling!  I learned to ride a bike on a second hand Stryker with stabilisers.  Riding a bike is nothing like riding a bike with stabilisers.  The hardest part is learning to balance.  Now children learn to ride on balance bikes.
• ALT - @olliebray In my career, I've always tried to think about things that work well and better ways to learn things.  How do we operate within cultural boundaries, but how can we do things a bit differently to improve things?
• Lee Ballantyne - "...technology is not going to make teaching easier, it;s going to make it different. won't make teaching easier."
• ALT - @olliebray How can we re-imagine learning as what it could be, but still working within the boundaries of the system?
• Terese Bird - Love this idea from @olliebray of the balance between free-inquiry and structure, in play and in learning. Helps me to understand why I like some games & learning and passionately dislike others
• Lee Ballantyne - Playful paradoxes - how can we relate this idea to formal and informal learning (for fun), and to the workplace?
• Sue Beckingham - The Future: Large Technology Drivers
• ALT - @olliebray We need appropriate tools.  People use new shiny tools but use them to do the same old things.  How can we be sure we make the right purchasing decisions for children and the context they learn in?
• ALT - @olliebray If we want to solve complex problems it comes down to people, pedagogy and leadership.  We might be technology leaders but we're not always the technology decision makers.
• "We're technology leaders but not always technology decision makers".  We need great leadership in learning technology linked to the teaching and pedagogy.
• Emily Armstrong - @olliebray mentions time as a barrier but which gives me an excuse to mention my favourite TEL revaluation thanks to @jamesclay - it's about normally prioritisation not time - https://elearningstuff.net/2015/12/09/i-dont-have-a-dog-altc
• ALT - @olliebray I believe we develop skills with engaging and immersive experiences. I'm a huge fan of outdoor learning and play based approaches to digital technology.
• ALT - @olliebray We need to be careful not to create digital learning environments that are just telling people stuff.
• Katharine Reedy - People develop holistic skills through engaging and immersive experiences - meaningful, joyful, iterative, actively engaging and socially interactive characterise playful experiences (and good lessons)
• Sue Beckingham - 5 characteristics of playful experiences
• Kay Hack - Benefits of Lego in playful learning
• Open ended learning - hard to do in online learning as it does come to an end, programme end date for example.  How does this fit with lifelong learning?
• ALT - @olliebray We talk a lot about life long learning but often learning experiences come to an end and every course has a hard stop.
• Sheila MacNeill - @olliebray making good points about our use of the word creative - often confused /conflated with imagination - but again context always key
• Creativity is different to imagination
• ALT - @olliebray How often do children and adults learn together? This probably doesn't happen a lot. We learn a lot from our students, but not *with* them.
• ALT - @olliebray What binds technology and playfulness together is the word "curious". If we can develop curious people, they tend to be playful in nature.
• Dr William Finlay - To develop people: understand the need; understand the skill; understand how to develop the skill to suit that need.
• ALT - @olliebray A lot of what I've been talking about is common sense. It's easy to forget common sense because we get burdened with other stuff. We need to step back from time to time.
• Me - Key message to me from @olliebray's keynote is, learning doesn't have to be rigid, linear and always serious. But open ended, meaningful, no matter your age and... FUN! Carry on encouraging curiosity in our learners/ourselves that leads to creative and imaginative skills.  Oh, and it's good to be playful!
• Lisa Gray, Clare Killen and Dr. Gill Ferrell - Creating a digitally capable organisation: the critical success factors
• Contextualise organisational framework
• Discovery tool - reflective questions designed gain useful feedback
• Key successes:
• Common vocabulary - how is this communicated?
• Strategic support - stakeholder group
• Engaging HR - recruitment, appraisal, etc
• Developing staff and students - reward and recognition
• Building digital capability into the curriculum
• Working in partnership
• Derby meeting with subject teams and understanding DC needs and action planning
• Template - Where are you on your journey?  As an organisation.  Radar diagram like a spider web) - themes on outside: learning, teaching and assessment; research and innovation; ICT infrastructure; content and information; communication; organisational digital culture.  Asked to plot where you are and where you hope to get to.
• Maturity model
• Katharine Reedy and Jitse van Ameijde - Interactive student journey planning for the development of digital skills
• My reflections throughout this session:
• In the group activity people are just saying broad stuff like MS Teams to communicate.  Making assumptions on tools that they can use.  But do students know this?  You can break that down into deeper specific skills.  E.g. intercultural communications and collaboration, handling large amounts of diverse data and creative problem solving.
• I was thinking of steps before it.  Like the 'top 20 skills employers want' e.g. problem solving.  How do students apply those skills to a digital tool and context and what tool is most appropriate?   How do they know what tool is best, we assume they know.  We need to model these things so they know.  Give skills a functional purpose like Laurillard's learning types.  Do they know good practice in setting up an online meeting and know how to facilitate one?  What tools are available to them?  How do they evaluate and define purpose?
• Before students can 'do' digital skills they need to understand the ICT basics and terminology used, proficiency.  Links to types of technologies: learning technology, structural technologies and vocational technologies.
• Potential to run/adapt similar workshop

Great first full experience of #altc and it was brilliant! Thanks to @A_L_T and others involved for putting on a fantastic event. I've written and reflected loads so it must've been useful. 😅 Made new friends too. 👍 Hopefully see you all at the next one...

Special thanks to Nottingham Trent University for allowing me to attend and present.