After a ‘interesting’ journey we have arrived just in time for lunch, looking forward to a productive and interesting afternoon and have eyed up a few stalls to look at later with some possible useful information. After lunch with have a plenary on Digital champions followed by a few workshops ,i am particularly interested in the accessibility workshop which i hope will cover some of my areas of interest including use of hardware, alternative methods of access and use, and problem of those ‘not wanting’ to use the tech or are afraid to use it.
Ability.net quiz just after lunch was an interesting diversion that was not expected, it gave me some more knowledge of the general aspects of computer and web use, especially some of the statistics, like 10% of sites being of no use to those with disabilities.
The afternoon plenary was not quite what i had hoped for, though to be honest i wasn’t sure what to expect, it was pretty much who i am and little inspiration especially concerning BBC learning Andrew Tomlinson, with regards the using Raspberry Pis and getting people on-line for the Olympics. I am pretty sure the BBC at the beginning said they would be running programs using the pi for teaching programming and other uses in education, the impression i got was this not gonna happen at least not in an way that would hit a large audience, which is a great shame, especially since they did do it with the BBC micro many years ago, and that was a success. Slight side note and a bugbear of mine, he was wrong on the origin of the BBC micro, it was created by Acorn Computers as the Acorn Proton, and was a contender and eventually winner of a competition the BBC ran to get a computer that could be used by the masses to learn on, other contenders where Sinclair Spectrum and i believe the Oric Atmos as well, and not as he said designed by the BBC, the only change from the Proton was a new colour scheme (the protons was nicer though). So i hope they change they mind and stick to there original statement.
The afternoon workshops were interesting, i stayed with the three sessions run my ability.net. The first concerned the ways windows can be configured to make accessibility easier, most i was familiar with already but a refresh never hurts. The same techniques can in most cases be made in mac os and linux btw. The second session concerned the use of smartphones for those who are blind, which was fascinating and very insightful, and was very impressed by how easy it was to use, in fact it was probably easier to use his way without being able to use the screen with. The demonstration used a apple iphone, using gestures, text to speech and some speech control, and using apps and the camera to help for tasks such as checking the value of money, most of these also work on a iTouch, and some on other smartphones. He also demonstrated siri (though it didn’t actually work probably), but mentioned also Evi (which i have used unsuccessfully which works on iphone and android) and Edwin for android which i have not tried yet. The third and final session was by TechDis which provide advice on technologies for inclusion and accessibility. They mainly covered and demonstrated the use of two text to speech voices, which are a significant improvement on existing ones, although you can still hear its artificial, they were a lot better than previous ones i have heard, there are at the minute free to use but only for educational establishments and some other groups. Other tools they mentioned where Toolbox which is a collection of resources to aid accessibility, which i believe is free for all to use, and the use of Kinect to allow people to communicate and interact using the makaton sign language. Finally three new tools there are developing navitext, myDocStore and PSLT, they website is http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk.
Overall the day was interesting, even if we had a late start, i learnt a few new things to try out and explore, met some new people and reacquainted with others. Did not get to see any Pi’s are hear much reference but am convinced it will make a big impact on accessibility in the future. It was a long day for me but would happily go to the next one, and see what progress has been made and news of any other ideas.
repairing
26 July 2012
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Andria Birch
17 July 2012
Many thanks to Matthew and Aaron for outlining the advantages of Wikkis – this is really useful feedback and we will ensure that this is considered in any extension activities. Thanks again for commenting, it is much appreciated!
belsamba
13 June 2012
Thanks for the comments, as for gathering information, we could do with a dedicated area maybe just for this topic, maybe something akin to a wiki, i dont know if there exists one already within the dain reportare of sites, but are easy to set up.
maryfmoss
14 June 2012
a wiki would be a great idea – I don’t think we have done one before, but someone else might know……? Anyway, you’re right, we can set up a wiki on yest another site, but we could also do it on Moodle – two advantages would be that everyone already has a log in, and we wouldn’t be adding yet another platform to the DAIN list, but just using a different feature of one we already have. Shall I set one up in the Digital Activist Area, called Raspberry Pi?
belsamba
14 June 2012
Sounds like a excellent idea.
Matthew McVeagh
19 June 2012
Hi Mary – a general wiki for DAIN was proposed and set up in trial format by Tony Baker, a Nottingham DA, but not adopted as it was not official. It used a wiki-providing website called Wikidot. There are quite a few others of them, such as Wikispot which is free and dedicated to community project wikis and which I and a friend have used for a Nottingham ecological wiki. But it would be useful to not add a new domain name to the list of DAIN websites, and integrate it with Moodle, if it can be done. I do think a wiki structure for DAs to add their knowledge to would have been highly beneficial from the start of the whole project, never mind ND2012 or the Raspberry Pi.
digitalactivist
4 July 2012
Hi Matthew, Yes you are correct Tony did set up a Wikki which we said was fine for DAs to use if they wished in addition but we didn’t replace the website or blog with it. At that point it had cloned the information on the website but didn’t contain anything additional. It was presented to Nottingham DAs via a team meeting but not taken up by them. My understanding is that there is a Wikki function already within moodle, but as we know different DAs have their own software preferences and take and use of different platforms and tools has been informed by these preferences. I’d be really interested to hear more about what you and Aarron feel are the advantages of using Wikkis over blogs and moodle or other multi author collaborative tools so we can try and ensure that we address this in any project extension activities.
belsamba
6 July 2012
The various platforms available nowadays is quite extensive, and each is designed primarily for a particular style of web use, but is also a lot of overlap in them. Blogs are the conversation recorders and as such are excellent for recording events and experiences and what happened in them, but just as in everyday conversations the information gleamed can quickly get lost and forgotten if it isn’t recorded elsewhere. Wikis are that medium for recording, they are excellent at collecting information and formatting it in a way the users want it, and because anyone can potentially add to it (like a blog), its a budding pool of ever growing knowledge, if its is managed well. You’ll find most of the popular info sites use wikis, gaming and fan sites are using them more as well, because there easy to set up and use. However they are not good at recording a passage of time or conversation, in this respect i believe for something like DAIN, they complement each other well, maybe a dedicated person who can watch the blogs and add pertinent information to a related wiki area would be a good idea. The blog would record the events unfolding, the wiki the information gleamed from them, they just need to be setup so that movement from one to the other is seamless.
Moodle is a platform i think is good for providing educational material, i am currently (albeit slowly) adding to a pi wiki area on moodle, which works well, but its a notebook on the library shelf, nothing to do with how it was setup, but because of the moodle environment. Moodle doesn’t work in a environment where information is being collected and discussed, its too rigid and can seem very complex. Having difficulty thinking of the best way to describe what i mean. Hope that makes some sense.
There is more than likely a system out there that combines a blog and wiki with the necessary components of moodle, one system i use a lot is tikiwiki, it is basically a wiki but is more configurable and can be used to make very effective websites.
Matthew McVeagh
6 July 2012
To add to what Aaron says… the main advantages of wiki structure over blog structure are:
1. Organisation is subject-oriented, not chronological. New additions are not ordered according to the time they are added, but what they have to do with. People looking for a certain subject to learn about can find it much more easily in a wiki, with a blog the best they can hope for is some info about it is contained in a post with appropriate searchable tags, or a post with a relevant title that is visible if they find an index of posts.
2. Wiki entries are constantly editable, and by different people. Blog entries are editable too, but without the same utility given their time-based presentation. And since wiki entries are less personal it is more appropriate for multiple users to work on the same item, whereas that is very much not the case with blogs.
3. Interconnectedness. Wiki entries can link to each other, so learners can move from one item to another as they need, and back again. This is one of the main advantages of Wikipedia over paper encyclopedias. Again, blogs are not structured to facilitate this; unless a lot of repeated subsequent link addition is done to blog entries each post stands alone, whereas constant re-editing, including to add new links, is standard with wikis.
4. Wikis enable different contributors to focus on what they know about or are interested in, as and when they can or would like to contribute. They can add a nibble here or a huge section there accordingly, rather than having to think “What is the event I’m posting about? Who is this post aimed at? How am I making sure it’s interesting and informative?” They play to people’s strengths and existing motivations and encourage collective working by respecting individuality and diversity.
5. If wikis take off they attain critical mass and snowball. The evidence of a community satisfactorily organising a growing body of information is attractive enough to motivate new contributors to join, and existing ones to keep going. They can be helped to take off by being made easy to use and contribute to, and by being well-publicised and celebrated.
Matthew McVeagh
7 June 2012
Excellent report Aaron – if we see each other again I’d be interested in following up some of these points. You’re right about Acorn and the BBC.
Clare Caves
6 June 2012
Sounds like an interesting day Aaron – great that you could go. I’m interested in keeping up with what’s happening with the Pi too and potential for use by folks who aren’t currently using computers.
maryfmoss
6 June 2012
I was impressed by the accessibility sessions too aaron, – we should make sure we collect all our new information about this in one place, for any future work we do….. any suggestions where we should gather links, info etc?