Asking the question

I was preparing to share the delivery of a workshop entitled "Ask the audience". This has given me the opportunity to explore some different types of personal response systems that are available.

I decided to create one question and then see how it looked within each application.

This post is a discussion about the question that I used, what made it a good question and some limitations with the question.

The question

I created a map that included some of Europe. On that I placed arrows pointing to specific places with ABCD or E indicating the different places. One of the places that an arrow pointed to was Sochi in Russia. The question was: Where is Sochi?

What's a good question?

Let's take the Sochi example … what makes it good? Here are some points...

• The text is short
• It offers precise visual options
• The question can be used in other contexts as the arrows on it all pointed to real places, for example Moscow, Minsk
• It's current: I could add a prefix to that as "The Winter Olympics 2014"
• It doesn't offer too many options for response

What are the limitations of the question?

• Visual issue: I might need to explain where the pointers were without giving it away, for example, is it by the Black Sea? Is it as far north as Latvia? Is it in Belarus? And so on.
• Fortunately all of the response systems used images. However, one of them produced an image that was pretty small. In this case, I might present the image alone beforehand.
• It assumes that you know it's in Russia or thereabouts. I could have presented a map of the world and stood back to see where the answers went.

Response systems

Some response systems enable you to point to the location so I didn't even need to have put the letters A to E there. Others didn't enable the image to be resized; one in particular produced an image that took up less than a quarter of the screen.

Presenting - note!

Unless you wanted them to go to the Internet and to do a quick search the Sochi then and non-Internet system would be best to this.

Finally

The question that I delivered: where is Sochi is one that is a recall type of question, that is, one that tests knowledge. What I could have done was to ask people to apply the knowledge. Something that might ascertain their conceptual understanding or even a question that would test their knowledge and understanding. I could have asked them: if you were holding the Winter Olympics where would be the best location out of the 5 suggested?

I await comments from the workshop group….

(By the way, there follows a Creative Commons map that shows Sochi... it's one of the locations that is marked with a black dot!)

I'm not the expert - a cautionary tale

Last week, I was looking forward to presenting to a group of new HE tutors who were just starting their Postgraduate Certificate course. I had been asked to tell them about the technology enhanced learning tools. So, the day before, I went to the location and checked that the computer was working and that the internet could cope with a video that I was going to show. It did.
I didn't twig that the mouse was a Mac mouse; I was just using it as normal. Although I'm familiar with Macs - I have a Macbook pro - I'm not familiar with their mouses.

On the day - I was assembling things and I knew that some of them were on a new memory stick. Here's a way to impress one's new boss - I put the stick into the computer, to show what I'd been doing and the stick didn't work. ALL MY WORK... there was a backup but it was IN A SAFE PLACE... (a euphamism for "I'm not sure where..."). 
After trying several options with the stick and the computer... I suddenly realised that I'd put the stick in the wrong way. This particular slimline stick didn't stop me from putting it in upside down.

In the afternoon, I started to give my demonstration and I couldn't log into the VLE.  And the hundreds of times that I had logged in before... just when I wanted to demonstrate some great features. And I couldn't log in. I had been locked out. In trying to recover, I suddenly noticed the mouse and that it was different (without two buttons) and this didn't help as I wanted to right click. Eventually, I  recovered, but things were a little sticky for a few moments.

So - I need to be aware of a plan B. Not necessarily the stick either. I'm working on it. I need to be aware that if I make any changes, then the backup also needs to be changed too. Also, during a demonstration, to go quickly and seamlessly to plan B, as if that were the plan A.
And to be aware of the many alternatives that are in a room when I present.
The video worked fine by the way. But it showed me that I will never present myself as "the expert", as things are just as likely to go wrong when I'm using the technology. 


During the morning, I had spent some time helping someone by ascertaining whether some software was working. It required me to put in my user name and password to enable publishing to the VLE. Unfortunately the settings weren't correct but eventually I managed to succeed. This may have caused the lock-out.

SoftChalk tips - sessions for BB

Currently, we're using SoftChalk 7 (not Cloud).
I demonstrated some of the facilities of SoftChalk to BB and his students (final and Master's).

• Here's a link to my SoftChalk tips handout that I updated recently. 
• Here are some of SoftChalk's examples that I used. 
• And for people who need to know how to use SoftChalk, here are some of SoftChalk's own videos.
• Here's where you can find a link to a colour contrast checker.
• Finally, a link to Thunder, a free screen reader, so that you can hear what your page sounds like. Notice that Thunder's page has no scheme (style). Why?

You can download a free 30 day trial of SoftChalk from: http://www.softchalk.com

More Mahara - audio, templates, planning and more

So you have used Mahara to create a page and share it. There are more things that you can do with Mahara, such as adding audio, creating a template and using its basic planning application. This session demonstrated these facilities and showed examples of how they could be used.

Pre-requisites for this session

Summary of creating a page and secret URL

See Mahara guide (PDF) http://tinyurl.com/coventry-e-portfolio
NOTE: there's an Addendum to page 2 (PDF), to reflect the new access via Moodle 2 

Exporting some pages and adding them to Curve

Mahara Basics Demonstration Update (PDF) - see pages 3 and 4