M.I.A

I have been missing in action from the blog for a few months ... it's been a busy time and I have been stretching the old brain muscles brushing up on my existing skills and developing some new ones.

So, what's new?

1. I took my first foray into print design and produced a new prospectus for my institution. It was a fantastic success and earned me a few brownie points with the new Head of school.
2. To go with the shiny new prospectus I redeveloped the school website too. That too was successful and further topped up the brownie points. I delved a bit further into CSS layouts (previously I had mainly stuck to the formatting side) and the result is something uber browser compliant and accessible. http://www.walsallacademy.com/
3. I had a little freelance project on the go to put into practice my newly developed CSS layout skills and is the first time in a while I have built a website that is to be updated by someone other than myself. All the images are dynamically (and randomly) loaded into the flash panels for easy updating ... ditto for the randomised quotations on the home page. It also has an RSS display on the homepage which was a first for me. http://www.urbanvoice.co.uk/
4. I have a new hat at work which involves me going round with a camera and taking photos every so often. In fact I have spent much of the last week photographing the new year 7 students and building up an image bank for next years prospectus (I struggled for imagery this time).
5. I also graduated my MA! That was a super fun day ... there was tapas and cocktails aplenty :D

The super busy period seems to be over now, the excitement is simmering down and it's time to get on with making sure I am on the ball with all things web and elearning (which includes catching up on blog posts and dropping into twitter more often than once in a blue moon as well as making an effort to reflect and blog for myself every once in a while).

EU Kids Online - Final Report

Something for me to sit and have a read of when I get five minutes ... the EU Kids Online report from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

With 75% of European children using the internet, some observers celebrate children’s youthful expertise while others worry that they are vulnerable to new forms of harm. Policies to balance the goals of maximising opportunities and minimising risks require an evidencebased approach [...] Funded by the European commission’s Safer Internet Programme, EU Kids Online (2006-09) is a thematic network that aimed to identify, compare and draw conclusions from existing and ongoing research on children and online technologies conducted in Europe.

Click here to go to the report.

How Twitter will Change the Way We Live

How Twitter will Change the Way We Live is an article that was published on Time.com this morning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was alerted the the existence of the article from twitters new-ish feature 'Trending Topics' that appeared on the site a few weeks ago. There have been other articles along the lines of Why-Twitter-Isn't-Pointless-Crap recently but I thought this one was rather convincing and elequent. I especially liked that it admitted that we actually do quite like to hear about what our friends had for breakfast (for the social warmth) as well as the deeper more useful effects it can have for professionals.

Urgent Drupal Security Update

Ok, so after spending most of yesterday swearing under my breath at my Drupal test site trying to get the getID3() module to install properly I arrived at work today to discover it had fixed itself while I was away. Well, more likely is that my cache had cleared and my attempts to fix the problem were finally visible but it was annoying none-the-less.

So then I get told to run "Cron" (which is what searches for updates on your behalf I believe) and discovered an URGENT SECURITY UPDATE!!! needs to be made to my drupal site. I have to say, I am going through the instructions and it does seem rather labour intensive. So much so that I think I must be reading the instructions wrong. The go something like this :

Step 1. Make a back up of everything (common sense so far)
Step 2. Turn off all of the custom themes and modules that you spent hours, nay make that days of your life trying to get to work in the first place.
Step 3. Delete pretty much your entire site and upload the new version
Step 4. Re-Upload and turn back on all of the themes and modules that you spent hours, nay days, getting to work as mentioned grudgingly in step 2.

There must must be an easier way than this. I am making this hard work, surely?

Anyway ... I've just completed step 3. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: It worked, my drupal site didn't die and all is well in the world.

Drupal Update

So far my Drupal site consists of a Gallery module (using the open source Gallery2 software) and a Glossary (a module that uses Drupal's Taxonomy to provide mouse-over definitions of key words). They are both potentially very useful for teachers. I have also managed to quite successfully manage to fiddle with the CSS and image files from one of the download-able themes to create something that fits the school 'branding'. I'm going to spend some time now looking at podcasts and embedded video ... excitement!

What I haven't seen yet in the book is how to create a new home page ... or in fact any page that isn't module driven. Sometimes when you create a site you just want a plain old page that doesn't do anything fancy, just a bit of text and a few images. If the rest of the project is any indication, it can't be too difficult ... once I got over the whole mySQL database fiasco at the start of the project things have been pretty plain sailing.

At the moment it's just taking me a long time to do anything with Drupal, which I suppose is to be expected when learning a new workflow ... although not as long as it would have taken to build that image gallery or glossary from scratch I suspect!

Why Don't You?

I've got the tune of an old 80s TV show from my childhood going round in my head.

Whyyyyyy don't you ...
Whyyyyy don't you ...
Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set
and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

Well in my case it's probably the eeepc that needs turning off rather than the tv ... but I'm trying to think of something less boring than watching hubby play on his new toy (a Ps3 with the jollily titled 'Killzone 2') while waiting for facebook to get through with its 'maintainance' and twitter to recover from the fail whale while everyone tries to tweet about facebook being down.

So far my favourite less boring activity would be to bake something but that causes a) washing up and b) inevitable eating. I can see a stack of junk mail that needs shredding, am I that bored? I think not. I could blog something, although it would be an extreeeemely dull post ... oh.

;o)

Drupal Update - Days 1 and 2

I have spent the majority of the last two day's having my first look into the Drupal content management/development platform. My first impressions are that Drupal could actually be something quite useful for me when building sites that need to be maintained by somebody else. In fact, after a recent meeting with the Design and Technology teaching staff I'm using some of their ideas and requirements as a Drupal test subject. They want a gallery and a glossary and Drupal has modules for both - hurrah!

I have to admit however, for almost two full day's of work I don't have much of a site yet :$ If I had been using my usual photoshop / dreamweaver combo I would have at least had decent page template and some kind of site architecture. Alas, that has not been the case with Drupal.

Day 1 - Setting up a database and installing the core codebase. You would think that would be the easy part huh? Oh my god. I can not tell you how long it took me to set up that bloomin' database. I feel that the process was hindered by the fact that I actually read and followed some instructions. I spent an absolute age trying to run some kind of script in phpMyAdmin which I never actually got to work properly. I did a bit of asking around and decided to ftp the codebase to the server and see what happened anyway. It worked ... well, kind of. I spent a couple of hours trying to get the php.ini file working properly because my hosting isn't very Drupal friendly. I gave up and went home.

Day 2 - After giving up on the php.ini file on Day 1, I managed to get it working in literally moments on day 2. Typical. I then started playing around with installing new themes (easy peasy) and modules (easy peasy install to the back end but still no sign of them on the front end website). At one stage I found a seemingly very useful feature ... a site maintenance option that essentially turns off the site and displays a we're-working-on-it type message. This is all very well and good until you consider that you need to be IN the site to edit it and if you close the admin area while you are still in site maintenance mode you can't get back in. Well, after searching the Drupal Support forums I discovered that there is a back door, obviously, but you do need to be able to remember your password which I couldn't for a while LOL. I was horrified at the time but it is reeeeeeeally funny in hindsight.

So, today is Day 3. I'm going to try and get the modules actually working properly. One of them is a gallery2 module which means I get to play with some other open source goodness :o))

Learning Plan

Despite the very recent end of my post-grad studies (for now at least) I do need something to keep my mind stretching. I will never be the sort of person to learn how to do something and then stop. I have two things on the go at the moment.

1. Actionscript 3.0 - a necessary evil. I really must try and get to grips with this before actionscript 2.0 is completely obselete.

2. Drupal - The Drupal for ELearning and Education book I mentioned in my last post has landed on my desk so this morning I have downloaded the core codebase (that's the base install of the essential drupal modules that you download from the drupal website) and now I am going to sort myself out some server space on which to experiment. My diary is clear so I think I can safely spend the rest of the week playing Drupal Developer. Goodie!

Official - Gemma Witton MA

I have just about stopped celebrating for long enough to write a post to report that I have finally had the results from my final MA module, H810 Accessible Online Learning : Supporting Disabled Students. Somehow ... and I'm not quite sure how ... I managed to scrape myself a Distinction grade by getting my highest mark of all for the final examinable component. I haven't done enought to get a distinction overall for the MA, that ship sailed long ago, but it is certainly a very VERY nice way to end the course and I am absolutely chuffed to bits :D

Graduation will take place on Saturday 20th June, 3.00pm at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. Family tickets are booked and gown hire is organised, so all thats left to do now is turn up, find Sarah, shake hands on stage in front of a few thousand people (eeek) then most probably find tapas and cocktails afterwards!

I Need a Good Plan

It has been over a month now since I finished my final MA ODE module. The results are due in a couple of weeks but I'm feeling moderately confident of a pass. I have been enjoying not having to study at the weekends, having time to cook and bake, spending a bit of time in the garden and generally looking after myself and my surroundings. I am even reading some books for fun ... The Mighty Book of Boosh and Nigel Slater's Eating for England.

That said, I am starting to feel a little bit itchy for some professional development now. I have vague plans to develop some Flash Actionscript 3.0 skills and have access to some online training at linda.com but I haven't actually got past the introductory videos yet which only tell you WHY you might want to learn it and not HOW things are actually done. My attempts at learning previous versions of actionscript have been fairly unfruitful in so far as I get to a certain point in the training and then get completely lost. At some point I seem to always miss something vital and end up deeply frustrated.

I also just read a blog post reviewing a book on Drupal for Education and ELearning. At the moment I have no real need to learn Drupal but it's something I am definitely interested in. My MA sparked my interest in all things open source (and gave me the confidence to stick-it-to-the-man with a eeepc that runs linux instead of windows but that's another story really) and I think having a bit of knowledge on the subject - even if i don't actually do anything with it - can only be a positive thing.

So, the next thing I need to do is come up with some kind of learning plan. Part of that plan is a career upgrade but these things take time, especially in the current job market. I also need to make some time for Actionscript 3.0 and Drupal learning.

Time to formulate a plan ...

Saving Bletchley Park

I've just plurked, re-tweeted, facebooked and now blogging the link to Save Bletchley Park.

If the govenment can plough £millions into banks and car manufacturers than perhaps they can spare a few bucks for one of the most important sites in the history of computing?

There was a programme on tv about this recently, I can't remember what the programme was, or when it was shown. It could have been an item on the news in fact. Bletchley park was somewhere I had never heard about until that show and the forgot about shortly after. BUT I have just been reminded about it by a tweet by Stephen Fry who I have just started following on twitter (let's face it, if anyone has anything worth listening to on Twitter it's likely to be him).

The upshot of having the link twittered by Mr Fry is that the petition to the government to save Bletchely has been signed by an extra couple of thousand people in quite literally minutes. Bloody impressive. I think we can safely say that social web stuff is really starting to have a serious influence.

A New Name for a New Chapter

Being as H810 is essentially over now (results pending) I decided that the blog name H810 And Other Stories didn't really fit anymore. Being as I do want to keep the blog for general professional development, reflection and other interesting things I come across along the way I have decided to rename the blog "Little Bits of Learning" and will be on the new domain http://www.littlebitsoflearning.blogspot.com from now on.

A little light accessibility relief.

For anyone after a little light relief from the final week stresses of H810, here's a fairly amusing and possibly even thought provoking little song about the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Thanks to Sarah Horrigan's original blog post for introducing me to the joys of eLearning inspired Hip Hop. Enjoy!

End of Course Reflection

This morning I have submitted my ECA (End of Course Assessment) paper for H810. I'm quite happy with what I have written and confident that I have included the things I wanted to, made some useful observations and reflected on my context sufficently. Hopefully I have done enough to get me the final pass grade I need to complete my MA ODE, get those extra letters after my name and have some fun wearing the silly blue outfit at a graduation ceromony in the summer.

I feel a little bit strange actually. I've spent the last two and a half years studying, while working full time and also generally trying to have a life. In the only short gap I have had between courses I got married, so things have been pretty busy non-stop since about errrmmm ... 2006. I'm not complaining, I like it that way and would be bored otherwise, which is probably why I'm feeling ever so slightly apprehensive!

What on earth am I going to do?

Perhaps I might manage to get round to catching up on some housework? It would be nice to live in an organised and tidy house again :) And our garden requires some serious attention this year. I may even find time to read some books for fun!

Seale Chapter 13 - Notes

Seale (2006, ch.13) discusses the development of accessibility within an organisation as the creation of a constellation of practice, rather than a community of practice. How helpful do you think this approach is?

I think this is quite helpful. It provides a useful method of identifying the different roles within a community of practice, while acknowledging their influence on one another.

Do you think that Figure 13.1 on page 182 would be useful as a trigger for discussion within your organisation?

Seale's diagram is made with Higher Education in mind and would need to be adjusted to better represent the groups in my Secondary education context.

Would it enable you and your colleagues to identify what changes or developments are needed and why they are needed?

I think further development would be needed first, for example introducing a method of showing where channels of communication are stronger/weaker, which stakeholder groups have greater influence and so on.

Seale Chapter 12 - Issues

Identify three issues that are of most relevance or of most interest to you. Write two or three paragraphs about each of these three issues, either as private notes or in your blog.

Can novices in an accessible elearning activity system eventually become experts?
Although it is probably possible for a novice to learn enough through the accessible elearning activity system to eventually become an expert in theory. In practice however, it is unlikely that any subject who is not already a specialist in accessible elearning but is inviolved in the production of elearning materials to be able to devote a significant proportion of time to becoming an expert. Division of labour is likely to be an important factor in the resolution of this issue, and the division of labout needs to be influenced and made clear by an improvement of the rules (internal formal policy).

Are there contraditions between central components of an accessible e-learning system and can the identification of these contradictions help to develop and progress future practice?
Identification and isolation of the contradictions may help to provide clues as to the core problems that cause conflict between different components. Identification of seperate issues may helpmake the task of conflict resolution more manageable.

Is there a conflict between the object and division of labour that is is pulling different stakeholders apart and preventing them from working together to meet the objective?

From what I can tell, and this is true in my context, insufficient communication between stakeholders seems to cause much of the conflict. In order to work together to meet the objetive stakeholders must work together to develop a learning community based on sharing of knowledge and experience ... but how can we do this?

Seale Chapter 12 - Notes

Seale identifies six potential areas for conflict or contradiction within an organisation or activity system. What potential contradictions exist in your organisation and why?

Subject and Tools - Formal external rules such as guidelines and legislation are unclear, evaluation and repair tools are misunderstood. There is also a general technophobia (for want of a better word) regarding the publishing software for online content in general.

Subject and Rules - Insufficient motivation provided by formal internal rules such as accessibility policy for example no requirement or deadline for compliance.

Subject and Object - The need provision of elearning is an issue in itself. Becasue accessibility was not built in to elearning implementation from the outset this now creates an additional conflict. There is also a general lack of knowledge and understanding regarding elearning and accessibility amongst subjects.

Subject/Community and Division of Labour - It is unclear to the subject/community who has responsibility for ensuring accessibility, as well as having little motivation to find out or make changes.

How helpful is it to conceptualise the development of accessibility within your organisation as an activity system? Do you think that Figure 12.1 on page 165 would be useful as a trigger for discussion within your organisation? Would it enable you and your colleagues to identify what changes or developments are needed and why they are needed?

The figure 12.1 is quite useful for identifying and separating different areas of conflict. This can break down the issues into more manageable chunks and help to identify potential resolutions.

Seale Chapter 12 - Activity Theory

I'm trying to formulate a definition of Activity Theory as I work through Seale chapter 12 ... It's a new theory for me and I'm finding Seale's language a bit flowery for my liking and getting myself confused. In 'Gemma-speak' here is my understanding of Activity Theory and an example of it's application in the context of the ECA. As I understand it:

The subject : The student writing the ECA
The object: To write a 6000 word essay
The tools: Word processor, set text, internet research and online journals (and perhaps even a pen, paper, highlighters and post-it notes if you are old school!)

The activity of writing the ECA can be broken down into different levels called actions and operations. Objects become outcomes as they are completed. One such action may be to read the set text, an operation of reading the set text might be turning the pages (that's if you have it printed out, or clicking next/scrolling down if you are using the digital version).

A central concept of activity theory is the transformation of objects into outcomes. In this example the outcome will be a completed ECA. Activity is motivated by the need to transform the object into an outcome (completion of the ECA by the cut-off date).

An activity is not a fixed entity and will undergo development at various levels (actions and operations) creating a history. For example, the action of reading one article might lead to new ideas for the ECA which require further research (new actions and operations) to be carried out in order to complete the ECA (transforming the object into an outcome). *

Theorists view activities as a series of nodes. If the subject is taking part in several activities at the same time these nodes may overlap causing conflict. For the ECA where we are required to investigate three separate issues, one issue may directly contradict with another. Resolution of these conflicts is required to transform the object (complete the ECA with a suitable conclusion).

*I missed out a part about Mediation ... I couldn't quite grasp where these relationships fitted in but I will update as I figure it out!!!

Seale Chapter 11 - Issues

Identify three issues that are of most relevance or of most interest to you. Write two or three paragraphs about each of these three issues, either as private notes or in your blog.

What are the formal and informal rules of accessibility?

Formal - External. The Disability Discrimination Act and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act have the most influence on the core business activity in a secondary education context. The W3C WAI WCAG also have relevance for the schools online content such as the website, intranet, extranet and online curriculum.

Formal - Internal. The schools Disability Policy and Social Inclusion Policy, which refer to the DDA and SENDA.

Informal. Online training materials for the production of content give guidelines on accessibility best practice.

How are the formal rules being regulated and enforced?

In an online learning sense they are not really being regulated and enforced due to limited availability of expertise (in terms of time and the number of skilled staff). In the wider whole school context disabled students and staff recieve equal opportunities during the application process and reasonable adjustments are made to ensure they can fully participate in the school community according to formal-internal policy made in line with the DDA and SENDA. I am not sure how or if this is regulated, but should be part of everyday practice.

What incentive is there for institutions to invest in the skills and knowledge required to make e-learning accessible?

According to Seale, the main incentive for aquiring accessibility is financial as it puts them ahead of thier competitors. Developing a reputation for inclusion and accessibility can be a major selling point into the niche market of disabled students, particularly in the business of distance learning. However, it would seem that some universities have chosen to compete for different markets such as international students, commercialisation or research grants.

Other motivating factors include avoiding bad press through reports which name and shame bad practice and avoiding legal action by disadvantaged students/staff.

In a secondary education context the financial incentive for accessibility is less of a factor than in HE as competition for students is less of an issue. This is discussed further in my previous post.

Seal Chapter 11 - Notes

Do you think that there are any incentives for your organisation to develop or improve the accessibility of its online resources? If so, what are they?
Laid out in Seale Chapter 11 'Institutional Responses to Accessibility', the main incentives for HE institutions and training companies seems to be a financial one. Targeting the niche market of disabled students and attempting to win their business as a result of accessible practices. Unfortunately this incentive does not necessarily apply in my secondary education context at the current time. Firstly, the school already has a unique selling point (USP) in that it is a City Academy housed in a brand new building with ICT facilities that are outstanding in the local area. However, as the government continues to promote the City Academies programme, and other schools in the local area become converted and gain corporate sponsorship it may not be able to rely on this USP in the medium to long term.

Think back to before you started this course. Are there any assumptions you had then about whether and how to make online resources accessible? (For example, ideas about what ‘rules’ you should follow.) Have these assumptions or rules changed as a result of studying on the course? If so, why and how?
I had already done some research into the W3C WAI WCAG before starting the course so I had got a bit of an idea of some of the technical aspects of web content accessibility and some of the problems disabled people may encounter when using online content. My assumptions before the course were that the WCAG gave an all round picture of accessibility issues and that the validation tools gave a suitable indication regarding this. The main change to my assumptions has been the need for understanding of the issues and human intervention/testing to achieve accessible content.

Thinking about your organisation – can you identify people who make, enforce, advocate or implement ‘rules’ that apply to accessibility? (You may prefer to refer to roles rather than individuals.)
Senior Management Team (Enforce/Implementation), Head of Social Inclusion (Advocate), Director of ICT and ICT Support Staff inc. Web & ELearning Developer (Enforce, Implementation, Advocate)

In your context, are there any internal politics regarding accessibility? If so, what feeds the political debates: Values/principles? Costs/resources? Attitudes/beliefs? Culture/tradition?
None that I am aware of.