Learning eXchange, eIndia 2009

Posted by Atul Sabnis on August 26, 2009 in Uncategorized

We have always wished for the iPhone to have a better camera. However, here are a few images from Hyderabad.

and more

and more.

We’ll have a few more specific updates soon!

Update(s)

Posted by Atul Sabnis on August 22, 2009 in Activities, Company, Digital Content, Social Networks

Since the last post, a lot of poetic code has passed under the keen eye of our QA team. Scores of courses have been built, in a way that most of us did not, before. Dozens of UIs came under the merciless knife of our designers and many heads have overworked their gears for the new things that we have been working at.

We have enjoyed every bit of it and are happy with what we have come out with!

We are very proud and happy to announce the launch of our online learning exchange platform: Learning eXchange, or, just LX.

We will be at Stall 12 at the eIndia 2009, from the 25th - 27th of August at Hyderabad, this year, where the power of LX will be unleashed. If you are attending, participating or presenting at the event, we’d love to catch up.

If you’d like to know more about LX, more information is available at the LX Website. And in case, you will not be able to make it to Hyderabad, have a look at this introduction to LX:

We’ll have a bit more activity here, now that our heads are above water and we are able to breathe (and get re-accustomed to) air.

Virtually home schooled

Posted by robert.lamprell on April 1, 2009 in Articles, Discussion

Following recent articles questioning the Governments approach and reasons for its review of home schooling; notably a recent piece in the Independent and yesterday’s defence of home schooling by Bernard Trafford in the Guardian I find it ironic that so many seemingly sane organisations are speaking out against home schooling when the rest of the world is embracing the concept, particularly when coupled to strong virtual/online schools.

The Government continues to trumpet it’s desire for the UK to be a leader in the use of technology in education, and only in the last couple of years pushed the concept of personalised learning and the need for every child to have a portfolio.

Admittedly the approach Government is taking to home schooling is in line with their idea for personalised learning being focussed on a school adapting for each child, why would you not include home schooling as part of this, particularly if coupled to a well thought out online support infrastructure.

A recent article in USA Today showed that over 1.5M children are being home schooled, with figures elsewhere suggesting virtual schools have around 1.25M student registrations; it is not inconceivable that by 2019 half of US school kids might be attending Virtual Schools in some capacity (not all of these will be home schoolers, a percentage will be children seeking additional/supplementary education to improve their results).

In fact it is interesting to note in the chat at the end of this blog that the over testing of children is given as a reason for so many parents taking their children out of state education in the US; are we not starting to hear similar arguements here in the UK from parents, comomentators and practitioners…? Perhaps a review of home schooling in the UK should be welcomed, just that it should perhaps be looking in to how better to embrace the concept and ensure that the appropriate support mechanisms are in place.

More than the sum of their parts

Posted by robert.lamprell on January 21, 2009 in Digital Content, Discussion, Publishing

Whilst this article appeared in the film section of the Guardian’s G2 supplement on Monday, the broader issue the author is exploring is how her area of the printed word needs to look at how it can benefit and become more effective through harnessing digital content (in this case film), which is, of course, something that the education publishers are still grappling with at the moment.

Naomi’s, and generally documentary writings’, approach is still broadly didatic which, in many ways, makes a visual/digital realisation of the text more simple. A lot of Naomi’s examples of imagery enhancing the written word is centred on traditional documentary making, but there is one statistic that stands markedly from the rest of the anecdotes, and is drawn from her own experience with a lecture series, based on her book ‘The End of America‘, and the speed and breadth that it spread once it went online (1.25million views apparently, compared to, one would assume a number somewhere in the 1000s at best from the lecture series). Obviously for that kind of take up it needs to be something of particular interest, and in this case it obviously hit a nerve with the changing view America has of itself and its politics as the Bush administration neared the end of its reign. However the example still stands that by combining the researched and respected prose of her book, combined with Naomi’s standing as an author and activist, a very simple video reached far more people than her book ever would have on its own.

Whilst the article is focussed on how the imagery of film can bring the written word to life, her opinion is that this works best when one works together with the other;

“For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am much more likely to try and link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts.”

The fact that as you have read this post you have been able to quickly click through to see the original article, see who Naomi Wolf is, see where the article appeared etc… is evidence in itself of how comfortable the vast majority of us are (and how easy it is) of using the internet as a medium for publishing, but more importantly how at ease the vast majority of us have become at referencing and linking to source/supplementary text and information as a matter of course.

We are also all aware of social networking sites and how easily and often people share links/video/images/text of common interest online in this day and age. At conferences and seminars there is still much discussion about the idea of how the younger generation(s) are Digital Natives, and research published this week recent research has found that children are spending more and more time ‘in front of screens’, however that screen is less and less likely to be a TV screen and more likely to be a computer screen. What is still, broadly, heartening is that while the number is falling, the majority of children do still enjoy reading as well, leading us to believe that they still believe the book has a place in their technology centred world.

So it remains that we need to continue to look at ways to engage with school, college and univeristy graduates (and increasingly professional learners), who are more comfortable online but who, it would seem, still appreciate the importance and relevance of the book. As Naomi continues after the above quote:

“And these days, print without a dimension of imagery risks being flat, especially to a younger audience.”

The synonym [sic] from an education perspective is that learning without a dimension of engagement and interaction also runs the risk of being flat to its core audience.

Tweet Experiment 3 - Groups Updated

Posted by shaurya.agarwal on December 23, 2008 in Activities, Social Networks, Web 2.0

Great Turnout! Big Thank you to everyone.

Here is the final tally.

S1

Judge: Kunali Sanghvi

Participants:

  1. Atul Sabnis
  2. Hanoze Elavia
  3. Hiren Lakhmani
  4. Kurush Wadia
  5. Mihir Damniwala
  6. Pramila
  7. Rajesh Shetty
  8. Sumukh Byndor

S2

Judge: Ghazala Ansari

Participants:

  1. Abhijeet Sethi
  2. Ashish Lazarus
  3. Kamal Goradia
  4. Palash Sinha
  5. Robert Lamprell
  6. Shankaran TJ
  7. Sheetal Jain
  8. Souvik Chaki
  9. Vicky Bhavnagri

S3

Judge: Atul Sabnis

Participants:

  1. Archana Shyam
  2. Chandra Badan Singh
  3. Dip Narayan
  4. Ganesh Kumar
  5. Ghazala Ansari
  6. Jesi Patel
  7. Maxim Wen
  8. Rasik Arun Girme
  9. Rupali Dalvi
  10. Vishal Nair

S4

Judge: Nachiket Paratkar

Participants:

  1. Jolvin Rodrigues
  2. Abhijit Chaturvedi
  3. Jayanta Chowdhury
  4. Kunali Sanghvi
  5. Rachna Suri
  6. Shashank Abhyankar
  7. Sayali Gajare

…

Clicking on the names above will take you to their twitter profile (1 missing).

All Judges except Nachiket Paratkar are also participants.

The experiment’s already started! We did see some initial #TWEX twitter activity today, though not much on #S1 - #S4. Most of the participants are new to Twitter, so we may have to consider some time-to-adapt before the activity goes up (#TWEXHELP is still open people!).

Let the tweets begin!

:)

Tweet Experiment 2 - WHAT NEXT

Posted by shaurya.agarwal on December 19, 2008 in Activities, Social Networks, Web 2.0

How Twitter works

You tell people what you are doing, and follow what others are doing (all in 140 characters, max); along the way, discuss ideas, post updates, share news and info (but keep it short)

Just in case, watch the demo

What do you have to do?

The experiment has begun; Tweeting end date – 31st Jan
Essay submission compulsory for participants – not less than 350words and no more than 850words (be original)
Write-up to be created between 1st and 7th Feb
Writing essays cannot be a collaborative exercise (one person, one essay)
By 8th Feb, you would have successfully participated in a serious educational venture by LearningMate… yahoo!

Some Rules:

  1. Tweet everyday (your info counts)
  2. Follow your group
  3. Respond to fellow tweeters! (oh, yes)
  4. Be generous, share all info (the final essay cannot have any info that did not feature on twitter)
  5. Cannot share URLs (hey, that’s the easy way out!)
  6. Remember to subscribe to RSS feeds from blog.learningmate.com (psst, you can also subscribe to twitter feeds…)
  7. Hey, you can get tweets via SMS. But… you’ll have to pay your service provider per SMS you receive. (LearningMate will not bear the cost of the SMSs)
  8. Use #Tags (have to, or your tweet will be invalid)

But what are #Tags?

Hash tags (#tags) are used to track posts on twitter. Tweets without #tags will get lost!

  1. All tweets must end with #TWEX
  2. Begin your tweets with your subject; eg: #S1 for subject 1 (Kunali selected subject 4: Influence of Music on Popular Culture, this is what her message will look like:  #S4 which track is hot on charts in India? #TWEX)

Some other tags that will help you get to the information faster:

  1. Use #WISHX for “I wish it could do X” (X being your idea/comment/task)
  2. Use #NEWX for “look I found this new use of…”
  3. Use #TRYX for “look you could do this X” (X being a task/action that you would like others to try)
  4. Use #THOTX for sharing your general thoughts on the twitter or the experiment
  5. Use #TWEXHELP to ask for help on twitter or the experiment

If you still have any questions, please tweet Shaurya (twitter ID: http://twitter.com/shauryashaurya) for help, use #TWEXHELP (seriously).
A big thank you to Ghazala for taking time out to set up this post.

Let the games begin! :)

Tweet Experiment 1 – BREAKING NEWS

Posted by shaurya.agarwal on December 19, 2008 in Activities, Social Networks, Web 2.0

Owing to the overwhelming response, we have decided that there will be a fourth subject that you can choose. Here are all the four subjects:

  1. S1: Impact of Comics on films after 2001.
  2. S2: Parallels between Chinese and Indian street food.
  3. S3: Influence of the Chola dynasty on Indian Architecture.
  4. S4: Influence of Music on Popular Culture.

There are a few changes to the Judges panel as well. Our Judges are:

  1. Ghazala Ansari – judging S2
  2. Kunali Sanghvi – judging S1
  3. Nachiket Paratkar - judging S4
  4. Atul Sabnis – judging S3

The case of Atul and Kunali is interesting. Each will participate in an essay and will judge a different essay. More tweeting for them.

Also, we have decided to increase the number of participants to 28. So there will be four groups of seven members each. As of now we have 22 participants on board, Kunali the participant makes it 23. We still have positions open for another 5 people.

Finally, it seems that S1 and S2 are now overloaded. So, some people need to shift to S3 or S4.
We will publish a final list of participants (with their Twitter IDs) soon.

In the mean time here is what you must do:

  1. Get a Twitter ID (If you do not already have one)
  2. Get TwitterFox installed on your Firefox.
  3. Another tool for you can use for Twitter is twhirl.
  4. Get an RSS reader installed on your Firefox (You may also use any other stand-alone RSS reader). Recommendations are:
    1. Wizz
    2. NewsFox
  5. Subscribe to both the entries and comments feed on blog.learningmate.com
  6. If you have a smart phone, do get one of the mobile twitter apps. Reccomendations:
    1. Fring
    2. Jtwitter
    3. Where
    4. TwitterBerry
  7. Please do get in touch *via Twitter* with Shaurya (ID: shauryashaurya) in case you need help with Twitter, RSS or TwitterFox.

As I mentioned earlier, there is important information about the experiment that I would now need to share. Stuff about:

  1. How to use Twitter.
  2. How to use Hash tags.
    1. What Hash Tags to use for the experiment.
  3. Why not to Twitter URLs for the experiment.
  4. Why this is not to be taken as a collaborative exercise.
  5. Mobile Tweeting
  6. The requirements and details of the submissions.
  7. The importance of this experiment – our aims and perspective.

All this will be the subject of the next post – Tweet Experiment 2 – WHAT NEXT.

…
Just to remind everyone:
To register add a comment to this post or the original twitter experiment post with the following information:

  1. Your contact info (your twitter ID included)
  2. Your subject of choice.
  3. The number of people above you on that subject.
    1. If you are the first one on that subject put 1
    2. If it looks like you have to put 8, choose another subject please.
  4. The answer to “I want to participate because_____”

The experiment begins once the final list of participants is out, but hey! You can begin tweeting today! :)

Tweet Experiment: Status

Posted by Atul Sabnis on December 18, 2008 in Activities, Social Networks, Web 2.0

Hello All. Thank you very much for the overwhelming response to this wonderful experiment that Shaurya has started.

Here is how the list stacks up, if some of you can re-select subjects, it would be good for the judges.

S1:
1. Hanoze Elavia
2. Sumukh Byndoor
3. Atul Sabnis
4. Shashank Abhyankar
5. Kurush Wadia
6. Pramila Pandey
7. Hiren Lakhmani
8. Mihir Damniwala
9. Vishal Nair

S2:
1. Sheetal Jain
2. Abhijeet Sethi
3. Chandra Badan Singh
4. Souvik Chaki
5. Ashish Lazarus
6. Shankaran TJ
7. Robert Lamprell
8. Vicky Bhavnagari

S3:
1. Jesse Patel
2. Rasik Arun Girme
3. Maxim Wen
4. Dip Narayan
5. Ganesh Kumar

Which one of us is the benevolent one? Also, some of you haven’t provided a Twitter id. Obviously that is a pre-requisite for this experiment. So, please publish your Twitter id or make one, as soon as possible.

After we have a final list, we will publish more details of this experiment and we can kick-off the experiment immediately after that. Please remember that all communication for this experiment will happen only through this blog or via Twitter. So, if you haven’t subscribed to the RSS feed of this blog (and comments), you may not receive updates.

A Tweet of an Experiment

Posted by shaurya.agarwal on December 18, 2008 in Web 2.0

Tweet Tweet?

Do you tweet?

How twittery are you?

Let’s find out…

A tweet of an experiment that we would want you to be a part of.

Twitter is a micro-blogging application that many people around the world use to communicate with each other. You can tweet with your phone, you can tweet with an application and you can tweet with your browser - express yourself in small sweet tweets.

The aim of the experiment is to understand how this tool can be used in learning. How people already use this tool and how this tool can be used in more effective ways.

Here is how it works:

We have the following three subjects:

  1. S1: Impact of Comics on films after 2001.
  2. S2: Parallels between Chinese and Indian street food.
  3. S3: Influence of the Chola dynasty on Indian Architecture.

The participants will select one (and only one) of these subjects. Then they begin using Twitter while learning more on the subject. They share their learning with others using Twitter, see how else they can use Twitter to learn more on the subject. Use Twitter to make notes, have conversations, engage (and put Twitter to as many uses as you can invent for learning your subject). Once the learning period is over, each participant submits a short essay to the judges. The judges will then rate the essays in each of the subject.

Each participant’s Twitter activity will be analyzed and will provide insights into how micro-blogging can assist us in creating better learning experiences (contextual innovation anyone?)

Interested? Sign up!!!

We have six initial participants in place. We are looking for another fifteen.

This makes it a total of twenty-one. Each subject can have a maximum of seven participants and one judge.

Here are the rules of engagement.

  1. You have to use Twitter (duh!)
  2. Follow the others on Twitter who signup for the experiment.
  3. You cannot tweet URLs, only information.
  4. You can tweet as much as you like, but you cannot use another tool to share information.
  5. The study period is from Jan 1 2009 to Jan 31 2009.
  6. After this you will have time till Feb 7 2009 to submit your essays.

Registration is on an early-bird-gets-to-tweet basis. Just add a comment to this post with:

  1. Your contact info (your twitter ID included)
  2. Your subject of choice.
  3. The number of people above you on that subject.
    1. If you are the first one on that subject put 1
    2. If it looks like you have to put 8, choose another subject please.
  4. The answer to “I want to participate because_____”

The judges on our panel are:

  1. Ghazala Ansari
  2. Kunali Sanghvi
  3. Nachiket Paratkar

The signed-up participants are:

  1. Souvik Chaki
  2. Jolvin Rodrigues
  3. Atul Sabnis
  4. Ganesh KumarM.R.
  5. Mihir Damniwala
  6. Prasad Mohare

Is the seventh one you?

More details coming up soon. All further updates will be through this blog!

Dilemma with Multiple Intelligences

Posted by kunali.sanghvi on November 12, 2008 in Content, Digital Content, Discussion, Instruction, eLearning

While Dr. Howard Gardner’s eight multiple intelligences address the complete human potential beyond the traditional I.Q. tests, there is dearth of research or application of this concept to education. Primarily the first two, linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence are the focus of all testing and hence, teaching in the educational world. However, a shift towards a well-rounded education is noted, especially in elementary school, i.e. Kindergarten through 5, and perhaps even in middle school (up to grade 8).

But what happens at higher grade levels and even in college? The current educational system around the world moves from integrated learning to specialized learning. So we move from mandatory subjects to optional subjects depending on our interest which typically arises from what we feel confidence in our abilities, in short from our strongest intelligences.

So the dilemma is this: Is it worthwhile to develop courseware for subjects that target specific intelligences such as math or linguistics in different formats so that people with say strong musical or bodily-kinesthetic intelligences can also study these subjects?

Are we then saying that we want to accommodate people who are studying not for the sake of a career but only for the joy of learning or because their social influences force them to study material that goes against their in-built capabilities?

Not looking at these questions from a judgemental point of view but looking at it solely from an objective point of view… is there a market of people studying math in higher education who are struggling with the abstract concepts taught simply because their logical-mathematical intelligence is not high or higher than their other intelligences?

Let us take an example. A person with exceptional bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, say Ms. Grace would choose dance as a career whereas a person with good logical-mathematical intelligence, say Mr. Logic, would choose engineering or finance as a career to pursue.

What happens when Ms. Grace is able to understand math, in her own way, and perform as well as Mr. Logic? Does it open up a spectrum of career opportunities for Ms. Grace outside of dance? If yes, does the system of specialization that we currently live and work in disintegrate to form better informed and better educated group of individuals who are able to perform a wide variety of jobs? Or is this too idealistic a scenario? Does the job world get completely disrupted due to a shift away from specializations?

So far I don’t have answers, but there is a sense of standing on the brink of something big. Is this a vision for change?

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