Education - OU Community Online

The Wolfson OpenScience Laboratory will be at the cutting edge of new techniques in online education.

It will be a gateway to a range of scientific experiments and observations, many developed by Open University scientists.

Although the centre will operate entirely online, users will access data from real physical instruments and equipment enabling them to carry out authentic and rigorous science investigations.
 
Professor Steve Swithenby, Science Director of eSTEeM at the OU said: “Practical science has been an under-developed area of online education – it is cost-effective and is a bold way of making the world of science accessible to many more people, particularly those in the least developed countries.”

Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, said: “The Open University is among the international pioneers in this field and we look forward to the Wolfson OpenScience Laboratory making practical science available to many more students across the globe."

Read the full story here.

What is Talk Factory?
Talk Factory is designed for use on an Interactive Whiteboard and supports whole class plenary discussions. It is designed to support ‘exploratory’ talk, which is defined as “a joint, co-ordinated form of co-reasoning, in which speakers share relevant knowledge, challenge ideas, evaluate evidence, consider options and try to reach agreement in an equitable manner” (Mercer, 2008). Research in recent years has found that this kind of classroom dialogue is effective for promoting children’s talking, thinking and listening skills (see Mercer and Littleton, 2007 and the Thinking Together website for details).

The software was recently showcased at the Open University/UK Literacy Association (UKLA) and as a result has already been adopted by Cornwall Learning. Andy Brumby from Cornwall Learning believes it will make an important contribution to the development of students’ thinking, listening and argumentation skills in the classroom.

Find out more:

• Talk Factory
• The Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)

Vital Professional Development (Vital) helps schools and colleges to enhance their teaching using ICT and supports the teaching of IT and Computing to students. It provides materials that can be used in the classroom to inspire learners and opportunities for teachers to share expertise.

It is supported by a network of regional teams who organise events and activities such as “TeachMeets” across the UK.

Vital was launched in January 2010 with funding from the Department for Education, and is delivered in collaboration with other key providers including e-skills UK.

The additional funding will allow the programme to extend its reach and will support a new In-house Professional Development Partnership, a school-based initiative continuing professional development initiative which include subject-specific web-portals identifying high quality teaching resources.

Dr Peter Twining, Vital Director and Senior Lecturer at The Open University, said: “This is great news for the programme and allows us to partner with more schools and colleges to help them maximise the impact of their existing resources. The In-house Professional Development Partnership model provides an economical yet high quality and effective approach to staff development that is flexible and sustainable, and targeted on meeting each partner institution’s specific development needs.”

Enquiries: email info@vital.ac.uk or telephone 0845 366 0481

Speakers for Schools are offering state schools the opportunity to access a fantastic network of speakers who are willing to give inspirational talks to young people for free.

These speakers have kindly agreed to give at least one talk per annum in a state school and will address the big subjects: technological, scientific, political, economic, historical, cultural, artistic, ecological and ethical. They are people who will be able to explain the latest developments in areas such as business, cosmology, biology, medicine, linguistics, history, engineering, inter alia.

Speakers include: Honorary graduates Baroness Tessa Blackstone, Sir Peter Bonfield, Sir Christopher Bland, Sir William Castell, Evan Davis, Sir Richard Lambert and Martha Lane Fox. As well as David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Lord Sebastian Coe and other well know faces.

 For further information or to apply for a speaker, visit the Speaker4schools website: http://www.speakers4schools.org/

The figure is nearly double that of a year ago – with 70 per cent of visitors now downloading straight to mobile devices.

The BBC reported that the OU is now neck and neck with rival Stanford University, and ahead of universities such as Yale and Oxford.

Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University, said: “Right from the start, the OU has always kept pace with the new technologies of the time and it is fascinating to see the development of the post personal computing stage of the OU on iTunes U.

“It is crucial for part-time students to be able to study when, where and how it suits them and we excel at finding new and better ways to enable students to study on the move.”

The OU is one of the biggest and most popular contributors to iTunes U, averaging 275,000 downloads a week. It regularly appears on the iTunes U Top Charts and has one of the widest ranging libraries, including both audio visual collections, and over 400 eBooks derived from our award winning OpenLearn site.

In July 2011, the OU’s The History of English in Ten Minutes collection which went straight to the iTunes U (UK) chart at number four after just four days. Shakespeare was the top OU download on iTunes U that month.

OU material on iTunes U gets a worldwide audience with 90 per cent of visitors to the site coming from outside the UK. An OU on iTunes U audience survey revealed that 96 per cent use the materials for learning.

The Open University first posted material on iTunes U in June 2008 and recorded 20 million iTunes U downloads in June 2010. In October 2010, the OU was one of the first three universities worldwide to put eBooks onto iTunes U.

His research interests include human-centred design of technologies for mobile, contextual and inquiry-based learning, and the application of studies of human cognition and social interaction to the development of novel interactive systems. He inaugurated the mLearn International conference series and was founding President of the International Association for Mobile Learning. In collaboration with theOpen University's Professor Eileen Scanlon, he was Principal Investigator of the recent PI: Personal Inquiry project to support inquiry learning of 21st century science topics between formal and informal settings. As a member of the MOBIlearn European 5th Framework project he led the design and evaluation of its context awareness subsystem.

Other projects include Design of Games for auditory learning, L-Mo with Sharp Labs Europe to develop mobile technology for language learning, a study of Web 2.0 technologies for learning at school and home, educational futures research , the design of a Writer's Assistant, an exploration of writing as creative design, computer implementation of story generation, and the development of a knowledge-based tutoring system for neuroradiology.

Respect for the autonomy and dignity of persons, scientific value, social responsibility, maximising benefit and minimising harm are at the core of a new Code of Human Research Ethics introduced by the Open University’s John Oates at the Annual Conference of The British Psychological Society.

John Oates, Senior Lecturer at the OU, was convenor of the society working party that developed it.

He told the Conference in Glasgow the code, which complements the 2009 Code of Ethics and Conduct, is principles based and designed to evolve rather than provide a framework for every eventuality.
 

• Read the full code

OU lecturer Dr Rosie Flewitt, a research associate in the study, Multimodal Literacies in the Early Years, found that many early years practitioners lacked confdence in how to use technology, were uncertain about its value, "or feared the potential harm to' childhood'".

Concerns have previously been raised about how children from poorer families often miss out on the oportunity to use new technology but this time it is the nurserys and educated, middle-class families who are in the spotlight.

Dr Flewitt said in the report "Some children from highly educated, affluent families had very little exposure to new technologies whereas some children from less affluent families were given excellent support at home to develop their literacy skills through diverse uses of new technologies."

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