A library team's DigiQuest

DigiQuest: The dash for the cache! by Juanita Foster-Jones

Take your mind back to 25 July… a wet, grey day. This was the day the Strategic and Service Development team had our “DigiQuest” away day, although we didn’t go very far as we held
it in Digilab. Forget your flipcharts, brainstorming and post-its, this was an awayday with a difference. It had gadgets and gekos, pink pigs and pictures and most important of all caches with stashes and prizes!

There was a serious point of the day, which was getting to grips with the emerging technologies we’ve got in Digilab. The theme for the day was “Navigation”, and SSDG was divided into 4 teams to explore navigation within a specific context:

• Mobile learning ,
• Virtual immersive,
• World Gaming ,
• User generated content.

So where do gekos, pink pigs and pictures come into it?
Well the Garmin geko is the GPS device we used on our geocache treasure hunt. We had to solve clues to find an expert to interview on our subject, and further clues to find tokens stashed in caches which were cunningly hidden around campus by other members of Library staff. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds . The pictures we took using the various devices we had – smart phones
& digital cameras, and we also used the devices to record the interviews. This all had to be put
together into a presentation in the afternoon. However, to further challenge us we had to create our presentations on the macs in Digilab, using Keynote software and include images and audio from the day. Overall we met the challenge and actually had quite a few laughs on the way. Perhaps what was most revealing was learning more about the team.

Lets not forget the pink pigs...
the lovely sweets that we all gromphed to keep the adrenalin running.

What's in a DigiQuest?

Digilab is now offering staff development activities for Open University staff as part of the service. These activies are intended to encourage hands-on exploration of educational technologies for staff who haven't used them before, or who have only used them to a limited extent. We aim to help attendees come away feeling more confident about their understanding of the technologies and their ability to use them.

We offer two types of activities:

• Digiquests, which are intensive sessions lasting half a day or a full day,
• Digibytes, which are light touch introductory sessions lasting half an hour to an hour
  

Aims of a Digiquest

To

• increase awareness and confidence in using the technologies in the Digilab
• consider their potential for use in delivering learning activities
• foster teambuilding across development areas

by

• “hands on” discovery of Digilab based technologies
• Investigating navigational issues related to an assigned technology related topic
• Creating “byte sized” multimedia presentations incorporating user generated content

Resources available to attendees

• a Facilitator
• Geocache Treasure hunt (1GPS enabled device per team)
• Digilab PC & Apple iMac based applications
• Experts and Information Packs
• Technologies attendees can use to record interviews and experiences related to the issues under investigation
• Sweeties for necessary fortification and brain fuels
• Each other!

Theme for the day

The theme for the day can be negotiated. Themes need to be common to all types of technology being investigated, such as navigation. The chosen theme will run through both the Geocache treasure hunt exercise and the afternoon activity.

What do attendees have to do?

1. Attendees will be required to solve some clues and locate hidden caches on campus containing special tokens assigned to their team. The first cache is their ‘treasure hunt’ expert. At each cache attendees must collect each token as attendees need to surrender these in the Digilab when their team has completed the hunt. Tokens will be traded for information to help the teams complete the afternoon’s activity. Last team to empty a cache must bring the cache stash box back with them. Attendees will need to capture through stills, video and/or audio content:

a. the short interview attendees have with the team’s ‘expert’

b. attendees and their team mates discovering each cache and its token

2. After lunch attendees will spend time investigating navigational issues around the specific theme and

a. technologies that have been assigned to the team.

3. Attendees will need to

a. do some research using the information pack and case studies attendees traded their tokens for

b. assess and record what attendees think are the key navigational challenges for users in using their assigned technology

c. create a 5 minute multimedia presentation of your findings using Apple iMac based Keynote presentation software in the Digilab.

To arrange a DigiQuest for your team, please email digilab@open.ac.uk

Recently Martin Weller and Tony Hirst ran a workshop in Digilab on Academic blogging, explaining how they both feel that writing and reading blogs has helped them in their work.

Martin wrote about the workshop on his own blog, so you can see his thoughts on the value of academic blogging, and his slideshow, here.

I found it very interesting that Tony, Martin and John Naughton (who was also at the workshop), all had different reasons for blogging, and different views about their intended audience. Tony blogs for himself, as a way to keep track of interesting thoughts or work that he might want to revisit later. Sometimes his thought process his helped along by comments from those who read his blog, but he doesn't always write with his readers in mind. John sees blogging as an extension of his work as a journalist, so he does have think about his audience when he's writing, and Martin tries to stick to the subject of edcuational technology, so his audience are his fellow practitioners.

Tony and Martin recommend that new bloggers try to write 20 or so posts in their first month, to "find their voice" and get accustomed to the process before they start publicising their blogs. After that, it's up to you how often you write new posts, although obviously if you make them too infrequent your readers may lose interest.