Disposable email addresses

I've always liked the fact that Yahoo mail provides me with a way to set up disposable email addresses and now I've learned a way to do this in Gmail!

What is a disposable email address? 
Have you ever been in a position where you have to enter an email address (for a competition or some other promotion) but you dread the unwanted marketing that is going to flood your email inbox? Disposable email addresses allow you to receive the email in your inbox, but if you decide you no longer wish to receive the emails, you can simply set up a rule in your inbox to delete all emails coming into that email address.

Why not just unsubscribe from the marketing campaign?
The company who had your email address may sell it on to other similar companies who will then send you emails too! You don't want to spend your time unsubscribing from emails you didn't ask for! Setting up the rule to 'dispose' of any emails that come into your disposable address makes it simple to manage.

How do I create disposable email addresses in Gmail?
You simply add +something after your gmail username. Yes, it's that simple. Here's an example.
If my gmail address is somebody@gmail.com, you simply give out a disposable email address like somebody+anything@gmail.com, or somebody+goaway@gmail.com or somebody+001@gmail.com

Try it on your gmail account and you'll see what I mean.

Now you can sign up for stuff and after the initial novelty has gone from receiving voucher codes, great tips or trivial news, you can simply dispose of it once and for all from your mail box. Simples. :-)

PS I learned the Gmail tip from an LMS supplier whose system requires unique email addresses for each learner. It's much more efficient than setting up disposable emails in Yahoo mail.

(pix from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gmail_logo.png)

Design of multimedia learning v pedagogic approaches to elearning

In my current work, I create e-learning modules for learners who access these through a Learning Management System (LMS). I'm keen to develop some guiding principles for my team based on theory and research by Richard E Mayers, Ruth Clark and John Sweller. In addition, I'm influenced by industry leaders in this field like Cathy Moore and Anna Sabramowicz.
However, I'm also looking forward to collating the theoretical principles that will guide and underpin the development of our e-learning. While reading Mayes and Freitas (2004), I've come across some useful 'language' that I believe will help me to sell my ideas to the company. Up to recent times, the company has been putting out e-learning based on an industry-wide 'understanding' that colourful pages with narration and interaction will sell e-learning. I was pleased to read that "there is no real theoretical base, but rather a strong folk tradition that compelling explanations will lead to better learning" (Mayes and Freitas, 2004). I've wanted to have a good reason for moving away from the digital chalk and talk to a more scenario-based, constructivist approach and I think I'm building up some good arguments to move us in that direction. (We've already started by shoe-horning in some scenarios but we've not yet re-designed our whole approach).
Using Biggs' model of constructive alignment, we should be looking at our curriculum or learning outcomes (LOs), our teaching and learning activities (TLAs), the learning environment and the assessment methods. Because we work in a compliance industry, we have no say in the LOs. Our learners have to use our LMS to access the learning, so the learning environment is fixed. We have the most control over the TLAs and the writing of our assessments and I intend to use theory to produce our e-learning guidelines 2.0 and start to move us away from the 'presentation of facts' mode to a more learner-centred approach.

MSc TEL Day 1

Started on the MSc TEL, looking forward to engaging with theory and getting some underpinning support for things I know work! Pop over to the MSc TEL tab for my assignment related work as they develop.
Coursemates:

It's been a while since I've posted actively on the blog. I've not been under a rock; I've had to sell myself to the private sector. ;-) Over the last two years, I've developed further skills in VLEs (known as Learning Management Systems or LMS in the private sector) and the development of multimedia materials. I've been developing a community of practitioners globally through a video channel and trying to engage them through forums. The next step is to implement badges and to see what happens. Perfect for an action research project, perhaps? I'm looking forward to putting some of my current work under theoretical interrogation and also to developing more theoretical frameworks for the effective use of textwall.

Sadness at losing JISC TechDis

(I've had a busy 2 years as an e-learning manager but I'm looking forward to picking up the thread again. )

First off, sadness at losing JISC TechDis as a distinct service for Further and Higher Education. At the moment, JISC feels a little faceless to me, and the JISC TechDis team were a distinct team of people who were boldly making a definite positive impact on people's lives. I will miss the collective and will feel a little lost without you!

To leave the team a fond message to celebrate their 12 years of achievements, visit the blog here: Celebrating 12 years of Inclusion Technology Advice

Curation tools - Pinterest

There are many curation tools to choose from as can be seen from the list tweeted by @web20classroom http://bit.ly/SyViES. I have adopted and dropped a few over the years. I started with Delicious, moved to Diigo, tried Scoop.it for a bit and have most recently adopted Pinterest.

Why swap and change so much? Well, each new tool promised new functionality - but it has also been an interesting learning curve. I struggled with scoop.it initially. I just couldn't work out how to get to my own page or how to start a new scoop for ages. The same thing happened to me when I joined Pinterest. It took a bit of getting used to, but now it has become my favourite curation tool.

I've been busy curating a board of textwall case studies, images and so on.
http://pinterest.co.uk/xlearn/textwall
For the first time, I have managed to pull together a rich resource about textwall from the community. It's visual, attractive and helps to convey what textwall is about more instantly than a list of links could do.

So now I have a dilemma: Do I repeat my links in delicous, diigo, and scoopit? Or should I just reference my pinterest page on the other sites?

Epic's images tip sheet

In Epic's January 2013 newsletter, I came across their tip sheet on images and their usefulness in e-learning: http://epiclearninggroup.com/uk/files/2013/01/Images_in_learning.pdf

It ties in with my previous post on Daniel Willingham's question about the usefulness of the concept of learning styles. Epic's tips include the idea that an illustration can really help to convey some information more effectively than text or audio (picture speaks a thousand words etc). There's also the fact that decorative images (those that do not help to convey the meaning) are actually a hindrance.

It's great that Epic have highlighted this: I've seen a lot of page-turning e-learning content that 'forces' layouts that require picture on the left or right, so the designer has to upload 'something'.

I might consider putting an image of key words instead of pictures when I am forced by certain tools to do this.

One thing to add though, is that even though images may be more effective at conveying some learning, you should consider learners who are visually impaired. ALT text is a simple way of ensuring that learners who are using screen readers will have a brief description of the picture read back to them. Where a picture is complex (eg an infographic), it's even more important to accompany it with text that can be read back to the learner.

This may seem time-consuming, but there's a quick and easy way to turn your image into something more useable - with something like Screenr, Camtasia or some other screen capture software. You can talk about what you're seeing on the screen and record it. Creating this video means visually impaired learners can listen to what they have to learn, and other learners may find it more meaningful too.

I personally find infographics can be too complex for me to make sense of - I 'zoom' in on one part at a time to cope. By pressing Ctrl + on the keyboard, you can zoom into a pdf or website so that when you are using screen capture software, you present a bit of information at a time.

Why not turn things on its head and ask learners to explain an infographic with Screenr?

And it's worth giving Xerte Online Toolkits (XOT) a plug at this point. This interactive e-learning content creation tool has a plethora of page templates to choose from, and is highly accessible. Find out more about XOT from the Nottingham University web site, and if you'd like a hosted account for a modest fee, contact info@learningapps.co.uk.

Making meaning - learning styles don't exist

I've just been introduced to the work of Daniel Willingham, by my friend Keith Tellum, who suggests that there is no such thing as learning styles. I've seen this debate around but I've never spent time looking into it until now - this Youtube video by Daniel sums up his reasons why we have been so convinced about the learning styles theory.

So, he ends by saying that good teaching is just good teaching, and that a lot of the time, we are learning 'meaning' and that is not necessarily based around a particular modality like hearing, seeing or doing. (So I guess he's talking about constructivism.)
So what's my takeaway from this?
- go and try to find more examples of 'good teaching' and more research into why 'good teaching' is 'good teaching'.
What are the factors that make it so?
1. For me, part of 'good teaching' is related to the teacher's personality: A teacher who is good with analogies and story-telling (helping people to make meaning) will have an advantage over someone who just relays facts.
2. Teachers who are good learners make better teachers.
But there must be something I can do, as a teacher-trainer, to help teachers to become better teachers (using technology or not). I must admit there are certain personality types that are just HARD WORK, but the majority of teachers and support staff I have come across have just enough curiosity, wonder and interest to learn new things. Phew! So I need to come up with more techniques to unleash the great teacher in these people. Time to go research. If you know of any "practical theories" (oxymoron intended) I should be exploring, please let me know in the comments.
I am a little way through Daniel Kahneman's book: Thinking, Fast and Slow, and I'm hoping that I will find some answers in there eventually.