I recently attended an iLab workshop in order to discuss information technology’s role in learning and teaching for the next five years. The hook for this particular workshop was that in the year 2014 we would be dealing with Generation Y students, born between 1978 and 1988.

This struck me as odd.

Anyone born between those years would now be between 21 and 31, in five year’s time they’ll be between 26 and 36. So, by the point that our ‘five year plan’ has been realised, the student’s we’re aiming the strategy at will have graduated. Ok, there’s still the 30% of students who are postgraduates, plus those who are mature students (and hence over 21, and old enough to know better). But still, I can’t help but thinking we’ve already missed the boat.

The group we actually need to be focussing on are our digital natives, those born between 1988 and 1998 (and beyond). Looking at our plan, they’re now between 11 and 21, but in five year’s time that’d be 16 and 25. 16 is the age at which you start planning your future education, first with GCSE’s, and then with A-Levels two years later.

On top of this, you have to consider what it means to be a digital native. I was born firmly within the Generation Y era, and my wife is only just outside of it, but we are still left behind in some of today’s digital world (bebo anyone?). We can both remember getting on the internet in the early 90′s, but more importantly the ‘dark ages’ before that, when the idea of a schoolkid having the internet and a mobile phone was up there with moon bases and flying cars.
Someone now born in the era of the digital native, even at it’s lowest ebb of 1988, would have experienced the internet in some form or another by the time they started secondary school in 1999 (gonna party like it’s). And now we’re seeing that over 50% of 10 year olds have a mobile phone, rising to 95% of 16 year olds.

The landscape of the digital native is very different to that of Generation Y, and we should recognise that. We should start to plan for Gernation N.

I was home from work slightly later than usual today. Normally this is down to managers bursting in at the last minute demanding that I look into something, sometimes it’s due to me getting carried away in the moment and not realising the time. Today it was because there was an online assessment snafu.

It’s an event I knew about, it’s an event I’d planned for, it’s an event that I’d added to my calendar. It’s an event I completely forgot about because:

1. I added it to my, and my colleagues’, calendars a day late. Call this a moment of insanity if you will.
2. I forgot to set a reminder.

Anyway, at quarter-past-four, a rather anxious member of a department’s admin staff comes into the office, asking where I’ve been for the past fifteen minutes. Cue a hurried rush downstairs, to see the academic who fired off the original enquiry coming to the end of her introductory slides, and a room full of student’s at computers.

A silence descends on the room. Everyone in the room turns to look at me. No idea why. I’m here purely to see what’s going on. (more…)

Final presentation in this block covers Immersive Staff Development via WebCT Vista. Alex is next to me, doing most of the work, I am sitting here blogging.

I may be missing the point completely… But it just appears to be that they’re using staff development via a VLE.

Elder project. Based upon HEFCE Benchmarking, part of the Pathfinder e.Change project.

Aim: to capture case-based information about change:
Cases > Knowledgebase > ReferenceModel/Strategy

People store HE innovations in the knowledgebase, and allows others to search it.

Anyway, I don’t know if it was the extra bacon for breakfast, but I’m really not following this talk. Go to http://www.academicamour.com/ for more info.

So, listening to a talk on Web 2.0 from the University of Salford. The presenter is talking about hacking the Wiimote. Although he’s warning us that we’re sitting in a TableTennis room in a sports hall, with a hastily constructed lab, it’s likely to go wrong at some point.

Wiimote uses bluetooth. It also has infrared recognition, so it should be aware of its position in 3D space (although there are 3rd party add-ons which give the wiimote full 3D relational positioning via gyroscopes). This relies upon the handset determining its position in relation to a fixed light source.

However, you can do the reverse. You can fix the handset and move the ligthsource. The wiimote can track four lightsources by default, but can be modified to track more. You can fix the wiimote to a tripod, and move a lightsource which can be tracked (in this case the UoS guy has modified a Dr Who Sonic Screwdriver to use an infrared LED).

Using Wii mouse drivers you can treat an LED light source as a mouse. The lightsource is calibrated against the screen, then used as a traditional mouse. Although I’ve no idea how he’s hacked his Sonic Screwdriver to represent mouseclicks. Even a laserpointer can be used.

Interwrite Office Mode (?), a whiteboard application traditionally used with their handheld virtual whiteboard hardware, can be used with the wiimote setup to draw on the slides and save their contents. It even has basic text recognition.

Essentially any surface can emulate a interactive whiteboard.

Don’t work with childen, animals, whiteboard, or gaffa tape.

[Just did a quick Google, and mouse-clicks are emulated by the LED momentarily being turned off.]