Fortnightly Mailing

How do mouse-pointers actually work?

You will like this slow loading explanation of what actually powers your mouse-pointer. Thanks to Julia Duggleby for sending the link to me.

The Scotsman reports that the Interactive University is to shut at the end of May

Updated with footnote, and with link to 2004 report by Sara Frank Bristow,  on 28/4/2007

On 17/4/2007, The Scotsman reported that the Interactive University (IU), which has been held up as one of the few UK examples of apparently* successful large-scale provision of on line university-level education, and which was recruiting staff until recently, "is to close its doors at the end of next month", after "it failed to attract participation from the majority of Scottish universities and a bid for a lifeline £1.5 million from Scottish Enterprise was refused". For a detailed review of the Interactive University, written for the UKeUniversity before the latter had the plug finally pulled on it, see this 2004 report by Sara Frank Bristow, edited by Paul Bacsich [180 kB DOC].

* I say "apparently" as I am very sceptical about the approach to content development described by the IU. In my experience "ensuring that the whole content production process is completely independent of the end method of delivery" is neither a realistic nor a desirable endeavour.

Alexandre Borovik - What is missing from the social constructivist theories of mathematics?

Broken links fixed 1/1/2014

Today I came across Alexandre Borovik's Mathematics Under the Microscope blog, set up to support Borovik's book of the same title. The blog has plenty of interesting, funny, and challenging observations and insights, about mathematics, about learning and teaching, and about the politics of education. I particularly enjoyed these two.

• What is missing from the social constructivist theories of mathematics? which likens developing as a mathematician to being a dog trainer - "Mathematician is a dog trainer; his subconscious is his 'inner dog', a wordless creature with fantastic abilities, for example, for image processing, or for parsing of symbolic input. Mathematician has to train his 'inner dog'."
• Psychophysiology of blackboard teaching, from which the lovely image above from Samira Makhmalbaf's film "Blackboards" is shamelessly stolen.

Effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products in schools

The US National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) is funded as part of the Institute of Education Sciences by the US Department of Education. One of its roles is the evaluation of federal programmes. Last month NCEE published the first of two reports on the effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products in schools. Over 100 schools and over 400 teachers were involved, with the focus of the evaluation on learners in the first and sixth grades. The study's 2 main findings are summarised as follows.

1. Test Scores Were Not Significantly Higher in Classrooms Using Selected Reading and Mathematics Software Products. Test scores in treatment classrooms that were randomly assigned to use products did not differ from test scores in control classrooms by statistically significant margins.  
2. Effects Were Correlated With Some Classroom and School Characteristics. For reading products, effects on overall test scores were correlated with the student-teacher ratio in first grade classrooms and with the amount of time that products were used in fourth grade classrooms. For math products, effects were uncorrelated with classroom and school characteristics.

Citizendium - the Citizens' Compendium. Much smaller than Wikipedia, but with "gentle expert oversight", and no anonymity.

Citizendium has been set up by Larry Sanger, one of the original founders of Wikipedia. Currently it has less than one thousandth as many articles as Wikipedia. All its content is developed by people who have signed up under a Statement of Fundamental Policies:   

"Authors: all contributors have "author" rights on the Citizendium.  They can start new articles, edit existing articles, engage other contributors in discussion about articles, etc.
Editors: editors, in addition, have the right to make (or work together with other editors in making) plans, policies, and decisions for particular articles, and eventually will have the right to designate particular versions of articles as "approved."  As a rule of thumb, editors in traditionally "academic" fields will require the qualifications typically needed for a tenure-track academic position in the field, while editors in more "professional" fields require the usual terminal professional degree in the field plus significant experience and publishing."

So, even if all you want to do is to correct a typo or other minor error, you have to apply for an account to do so. I want it to succeed, but the hurdles you have to jump to get involved make me sceptical that it will efficiently capture knowledge for re-use in the way that Wikipedia seems to. It would be interesting to test it by seeding both it and Wikipedia with identical articles, and monitoring the way these develop over time and the amount of use they get. Maybe someone has already done this?

Geograph - 350,000 images mapped to the British Isles

Geograph is a stunning project to attach photos to every square kilometre of the British Isles. By March 2007 over 350,000 images had been submitted and 53% of 1 km squared grid squares had at least one photograph attached to them. You can view the pictures directly via the Geograph map-browser, or, if you have Google Earth Version 4 installed, using a purpose-designed Google Earth SuperLayer. To add photos you need to create an account.

RoboBraille - translating text into Braille

Thanks to Dave Pickersgill for showing me RoboBraille which "automates the translation of text documents into Braille and speech". By sending documents to RoboBraille by email you can, with a time lag of a few hours:

• translate them into contracted Braille, speech, or visual Braille;
• convert them between different character sets;
• convert Braille documents to specific Braille character sets;
• partition them into smaller parts.

Here, for example, is the RoboBraille-generated speech file - [180 kB MP3] of this posting.

Open Source software in education

A useful series of contributions about Open Source software in education is building up on Penn State University World Campus's Terra Incognita web log, edited by Ken Udas, who is Executive Director of the PSU World Campus. There is a project description and a schedule of recent and planned contributions on the Commonwealth of Learning's Wikieducator wiki. For example there is a two-part interview by Ken with Ruth Sabean, UCLA's assistant vice-provost for educational technology, about why the University of California Los Angeles selected Moodle as its VLE. Future contributions, are set to be published at roughly fortnightly intervals for the next 6 months or so, and prospective authors are invited to get in touch with Ken.
 

The Rave Wireless blog - pleasantly un-corporate in tone

Mobile Campus Life is the corporate blog of Rave Wireless Inc., a US company that provides mobile applications and managed mobile phone services to US HE institutions. There is enough of interest on this blog, and it is sufficiently "un-corporate" in tone, to warrant including it as a resource here.

The learner experience of e-learning - 4 new, useful, brief guides from JISC

Last November I gave a plug for some JISC "Learner Experience of E-learning" (LEX) reports, by Linda Creanor and Kathryn Trinder from Glasgow Caledonian University, and Doug Gowan and Carol Howells from the Open Learning Partnership.

JISC has now published 4 useful short guides, each consisting of a 3 or 4 page ~100 kB PDF file, deriving from these LEX reports as well as from some other practical research funded by JISC under the same programme. They deserve to be widely read and used; and thanks to Ellen Lessner for tipping me off about them.

• Methods for evaluating the learner experience of e-learning;
• IT support and provision for learners;
• Designing courses and activities for e-learners;
• Recommendations for post-16 institutions on enhancing the learner experience of e-learning.