Hannah Whaley . com

The year is starting with the UK Blackboard Users Conference in Durham this week. One of the presentations I am giving is looking at change in the elearning field, what can be attributed to the release of Blackboard 9, and what institutions can learn from this period of change. Here is the abstract for my presentation:

During the last eight years there have been rapid development in pedagogies for online learning and the underlying technical systems to support these pedagogies. These systems have matured to form a next level environment, encapsulated in systems like Blackboard 9, and the expectations for Moodle 2.0. These platforms have looked to bring the technologies implemented up-to-date (look and feel, underlying code, standards compliance) and to provide a sound platform to build on in the future.

However, the move to Blackboard 9 has been demanding for many institutions in many ways - bugs, stability and performance, staff training, staff engagement and expectation management to name but a few areas. These experiences have highlighted the significant issues that this change process is raising for our field, and fuelled concerns that central VLEs should be making way for more agile socially driven solutions. As many institutions are at the point of deciding what direction they believe will provide that next generation experience that we are all aiming for, there is value in discussing the extended issues they may face:

• Do we want the change we say we do?
• Are we capable of moving large scale VLEs forward?
• Are jumps away easier than jumps forward?
• How do we focus attention on learning and teaching and not the underlying technology?
• How can we manage expectations and change processes?
• Is our understanding of the elearning infrastructure at institutions the same as our users?

This talk will refer to the University of Dundee as a case study example, but will be discussing the broader conceptual and strategic direction of the field at this time. Discussion welcome.

Although growing steadily in popularity and function,  eBooks and eReaders have not yet reached critical mass. The platforms that we use to view them on have been evolving, and we now stand at a crossroads with 5 different directions of travel to choose from. Which will lead to the mainstream adoption of ebooks?

1. Amazon Kindle - sales of the Kindle have been impressive in the US (although unconfirmed), and it can now be ordered from the UK. It is also the most wished for item on Amazon. The Kindle 2 showed genuine progression in terms of functionality and it remains the main contender to become the iPod of the eBook world. With a catchier name than others (e.g. The Sony eBook Reader) and respected internet book giants Amazon as creators and sellers then it stands a good chance.

2. New Kids on the Block - some companies have come late to the game, allowing them to jump a step. Barns & Noble qualify with their new touchscreen Nook reader (although they are already getting sued) but a better example is CoolerBooks. Smaller companies retain the ability to be more agile in design and development will lead to better innovations, and therefore a path more likely to be travelled by the masses.

3. Mobile - why carry an ebook reader when you already have an iPhone at hand? The use of iPhone as an ebook platform has been increasing in two ways. One is through apps such as Stanza that effectively turn your iphone int a reader, letting you browse, download and read ebooks from a selection of over 100,000. The other is the Jamie Oliver route, where specific books are sold as iPhone apps in their own right, with additional video and voice content. Worth noting that Amazon have also released an app to read their proprietary book format on the iphone. Battery life and screen size remain reasons why this is unlikely to be adopted by the masses as a platform of choice.

4. Anywhere as a Platform - Google announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year that their ‘Google Editions’ ebook store will be launched early 2010 and will sell ebooks with no digital rights management attached. This means that ebooks become platform independent - you can read them on your PC, phone, Kindle or any reader. When Google step into any market it is significant, and these seems a well timed piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has taking shape for years with Google and their interest in books. Not surprisingly, a month or so later Amazon have announced a Windows application to allow you to read their ebooks on any PC (really covering all the bases now).

5. Not yet concieved - there is a good chance that the ebook platform of the future is still an unknown entity, an idea forming in the back of someone’s mind right now. The most obvious suspects are the unconfirmed (but widely known about) apple tablet or the Harry Potter style newspaper. The Apple tablet has the chance to combine the size and battery life of ereaders, with the flexibility of the various apps available, and the general functionality that Netbooks offer in internet, email and applications. Sounds good…

So which direction? I firmly believe that current ereaders are transitional technology - they exist to help move the mindset onto the concept of books being an electronic entity. This is why they are shaped like a book, come in covers that you can open and hold like a book, and some even have the graphic effects of page turning. Remember that the first MP3 players were the size and shape of walkmans - they could have been hexagonal but this wouldn’t have helped people make the jump! So that said, it seems hard to imagine that readers in their current format will still be here in 10 years - at some point people will find it needless to carry multiple pieces of technology that should be able to do the same thing. iPhones and the like are also not designed for purpose - too small and poor battery. They help sell the concept, but aren’t really workable.

So the answer has to be a combination of the final two - we’ll expect to read ebooks on whatever device we choose - and we expect the devices available to mature beyond eReaders and Netbooks. Agree?

A recent study informs us that 75% of 16-24 year olds feel that they “couldn’t live without the internet”. I hope we can presume that the removal of technology does not pose any actual physiological threat to their well being, and they are referring to the “OMG, like, soooo totally dead” kind of not living. Sadly 16-24 has not been my checkbox of honesty for a while now, but it still made me ponder about a week that I recently spent with very limited access to technology and internet. We found ourselves in a technology black spot in the Lake District with no phone signal, no 3G or Edge, slower than modem internet (3G USB dongle was insistent on using all processor power available to maintain a steady speed of 1kbps) and a TV that was used almost solely for the baby channels (sis-in-law and baby were with us). I did survive, but a series of very minor events led me form a similar conclusion to that expressed in the study:

1. My husband always buys a new PC game for going on holiday, to play when others are reading or generally having downtime. While PC games don’t require an internet connection just to play, it seems they now require a connection to install themselves and do their anti-piracy stuff before they will let you play. Dongle not working, we paid our £1 for 1 hour of wifi at the reception area (several times) and downloaded approximately nothing. After a day of failed attempts, we eventually resorted to finding a McDonalds and buying a Big Mac meal in order to use their wifi. All for something that previously we hadn’t even known required the internet.

2. A chap on local radio said that the new Cheryl Cole video was “not what he’d expected from her at all” which made me curious enough to whip out my iPhone and have a look. Unable to get YouTube, I became irked at every mention of it on the radio thereafter. My hubbie reminded me that I could always watch it when we got home the following week, instantly creating a fine line between passing interest and semi-obsessive Cheryl superfan.

3. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. Despite the fact that I have followed every minutiae of media effort surrounding him for the last 2 years, I was four days late in finding out this news. Even now, there is a significant part of me that doesn’t really think it happened, because I didn’t *see* it happen online. I didn’t get the realtime reaction and interest on twitter and by the time I was reading about it online, it was very much in the post-analysis phase.

So have any of these things had any significant impact in my life? Of course not, but either I’ve become a product of the spoilt brat culture of modern civilisation and can’t wait for anything, or the promise of ubiquitous computing has arrived and changed the way I expect to interact with the world and events around me. I am going to choose to believe the latter.

In real terms, Husband played his game, I watched YouTube when I got home and world events have now been proven to happen even without my watchful gaze. However, in the not too distant past, McDonalds was merely a place to eat, favourite videos would wait to be viewed on Thursdays on Top of the Pops, and at some point in the week it may have occurred to me to buy a newspaper. It highlights how automated our expectation of access has become and that it now requires a conscious adjustment to live without it. I guess that’s what the teens were trying to tell us in their survey.

There is an exciting new post available within my division of the Library and Learning Centre at the University of Dundee. From the advert:

“A range of enterprising academic software systems are in use at Dundee, and the Systems Developer will be part of a proactive team to further integrate and enhance these systems - ensuring they meet student and staff expectations. The team has an established reputation at an international level and is committed to building on existing work to remain an exemplar institution in this field.

The LLC is seeking to appoint a highly-skilled individual who can demonstrate aptitude in software design, web application programming, scripting, and data reporting. These skills will be used to design and develop add-ons, integrations, new functionality and automations, and contribute to upgrades, testing and issue resolution across all systems.”

I would encourage anybody interested to get in touch or send in an application - this one is a great opportunity for somebody.

Full details and further particulars.