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Jonathan Vernon
BA, MA (OXON), The School of Communication Arts, MA Open and Distance Education (OU), MA (Birmingham & Wolverhampton). Digital Editor & Online Learning Technologist, Designer and Producer.
Location Lewes, England
Achievements
Activity
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
How timely and what a terrific introduction. I hope tutors and students are joining this course!
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I'm as impressed with the way the course is presented as I am with the intended outcomes of the course!
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Nadra Huma Quraishi
@LindaDagbey I like it! This is clear, well paced and I'm sure it will deliver effective learning too. Perhaps like me you will use the Learning Designer as a matter of normal practice.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
We’re living in fascinating times - it is more exciting to be part of it rather than an observer looking in from the outside or an historian looking back at this period in 50 to 100 years.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I’ll get the certificate and pay for long term access to this content; I plan to master it. I’ve got lessons to plan lined up for the Learning Designer - the last I gave was observed formally towards a PGCE and was very well received for the balance, variety and methodology. The one on Digital Literacy. I now have something to prep: on personal hygiene for...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
When introduced peer review needs to be given a great deal of support so that participants are encouraged to do 2 or 3 or more reviews. This requires a mini course with examples and some lessons on giving constructive feedback. Surely FutureLearn has this as a ‘learning object’ that can be taken off the shelf?
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I’m intrigued, hopeful and excited - not least because I am in the thick of it trying to come up with solutions knowing that the answer is vast and disruptive. Some institutions will not be able to make the change. It requires significant disruption - the kind we have seen on the high street with retail. Maybe we will see students studying from home, or where...
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Teachers have to reinvent themselves as producers, subject matter experts and learning designers. I’d even suggest having a budget for professional presenters - presentation is not the teaching, that comes from the pedagogy. The model at the Open University of a team working up content for a module that will run for a decade is at the far end of the spectrum...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Teacher expectation and institution provision is that as little or as much time will be spent on setting up and delivering online as is required in the class or workshop. Trying to point that the effort is at the start to set it all up and this is mitigated later does not wash either as payroll is sessional - you are paid for the hours you teach with...
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My career until recently has been entirely in the private sector: media, advertising, comms in large businesses and government organisations. 'Change' and smart adaptation has been part of the management message since the early 1990s with Japanese approaches brought over from the likes of Toyota. Change was also sold through with impactful communications. As...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
There are a number of ways to improve the Learning Designer.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
If teachers, or rather more broadly 'educators', in order to embrace teachers, tutors, lecturers and others across all formal teaching sectors, are to be 'any kind of 'scientist' or 'engineer' then not only do they need to be qualified and certified, but they need to be paid accordingly - we are not. A previous Vice-Chancellor of The Open University had to...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Design is important - or 'writing' or 'composition'. It requires skill and care. There is a method to creating multiple choice quizzes that are effective - too often they are quickly put together, include flippant options which are obvious or the longest answer is generally the right one ... or the second. There are patterns of poor writing that are common...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Nadra Huma Quraishi
Clear and effective
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Shanara Haque
A delightful and effective lesson plan that has a distinct pattern - something I am starting to recognise having looked at a lot of these. Its as if at the start of the week I could not 'read music' but now I can :)
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Chris G
As a colleague has said to me - we expect everything to be as easy as Amazon. All trips such as they above need to be ironed out in Beta testing - which I know takes time, and for developers to make something feel and behave intuitively takes a lot of investment.
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Chris G
@ChrisG I have made the exact same comment. As I was teaching I couldn't join the webinar.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I don't understand how to follow the instructions to share via My Designs without the link to this presented here. I would need to be shown or reminded what box and icon I should use. Meanwhile, here is my adapted design from Scott Hayden describing how to teach a complex skill. I have taken what to some may be an easy skill - using the tool Screencastify >...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to LJ Simpson
@DianaLaurillard yes, all would be realised id able to play with the coding 'behind the scenes' :) I do so love Google Keep and wonder what elements there could be brought on board. This is very much about keeping the formatting, but allowed personalisation - I'd like to be able to import photos - say an image per section. So making it even more of a playful...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Andrew Beaven
I've been teaching and coaching swimmers for 20 years. Not an easy thing to do during a pandemic lockdown!
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I'd never thought of student self-assessment but can see its value. I may enquire, invite chat and conversation - but having them just write down their position before, during and after some learning experiences sounds really useful.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
All delivered online, but formative assessment using quizzes, and things like before and after mind maps, or Venn Diagrams - indeed any chart or drawing at all that expresses the complexity of a person's view of a topic, where they consider themselves to be and where there are strengths, gaps or weaknesses to address.
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Jonathan Vernon
I just gave a 90 minute class on Digital Literacy to some PGCE students and by all accounts the session worked, the timings were close and readily adjusted to accommodate lower numbers and taking a break - they'd be online since 5:30pm and I joined them at 6:30pm. Each to their own, but I will keep using Learning Designer. I like having a running order - this...
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We/I use Jamboard, Trelloboard and Google Meet breakouts - so Zoom is one video conferencing tool, Meet another - as was Skype in the past. Google Meet also has 'polls' and 'Q&A' functionality. To moderate Jamboard, which can be allocated to a small group breakout, a simple timeline or template can be on the Jamboard already. We are learning to work in teacher...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Jeshmeen Ramabhai
Wouldn't it be great to put side by side a set of classes that were delivered in the classroom before the pandemic and the need to teach remotely online, and a set of classes - ostensibly the same ones - now being taught online to see how different teachers, institutions, platforms, tools and students are managing? I've experienced both wonderful,...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Elena Forasacco
I too look forward to there being a signifcant libary, even at massive databank of these - that will be the power of it! I am now thinking of many learning experiences I have had which I would like to re-engineer into the Learning Designer electronic mold not only to share, but to see for myself for planning such learning experiences. I did a residential with...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Megumi N
I agree with your thinking and would certainly welcome an easy 'export' function that would take it into my chosen format. I would prefer a Google Doc of two or three columns with the duration, contents and colour coding. I've heard these called 'swim lanes'. I would see it as a 'Running Order' so that I can have this in front of me, ready to take a class ......
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Jonathan Vernon replied to LJ Simpson
I'd like to be able to design a lesson with my fingers on a touchscreen - for the pie-chart components be elements I could increase or decrease at will so that I could see how the pace of a session would alter.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
There's something really exciting here. I'm up in the early hours and have already written up 'two sides of A4' with my thoughts. Two decades ago I had just moved to an innovating and creative web agency that wanted to get into 'education' but our ideas were beyond what the technology and networks could deliver - we couldn't even put video up, let alone the 3d...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Every time I take a class online, or sit in to observer or to asssit with another class I need a simply way to plan, a simple way to reflect and a simple way to record what has just taken place. And have a process and approach that others can adopt so that in time we are all 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. Perhaps therefore the Learning Designer offers...
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Every day experience with different sets of students in FE and HE, from Level 1 to postrgrads is a remarkable insight into the endeavours of the teachers to teacher and the ability of some groups to be 'off the grid'. Every ploy is used by teachers to set up and track, follow and engaged with ... to winkle out of everyone some kind of response - if only a...
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Our experience is that work won't be done before a class, but it will be done afterwards as homework ... to the trick is to use homework to bridge between two sessions: delivering on the follow up from the session just given and feeding in the one to come.
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I have had it used on me often, the idea of small groups being set a task and given time to produce a reply - and then a speaker from that group providing the response in the plenary.
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Well said. The act of making a comparison is better straight off, and the fuller content rather than a summary too. The students have to engage, not simply be given the answers.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I understand that the best way to become a good teacher is through practice which comes from experience, and observing the work of good teachers. The benefits of these designs is to have enough 'good work' to draw from, like reading multiple reviews on Amazon, where hundreds even thousands of such contributions produce clear 'best practice'. This can be...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
It is satisfying and worthwhile to look at someone else's work and to provide a review; this is easy to do when someone with experience as a teacher producers a clever, simple and engagining online expressions of what I have learnt is an classroom classic 'using the five senses' to write a poem.
It is worth noting however that I had to click passed three... -
There's quite a bit to do here, and 'foreign' layouts to become familiar with, as well as a design which could be made more friendly and personalised. All is possible in the 21st century! Either massive uptake globally, or one institution or department adopting it for a term, or just a week of classes across a couple of departments would be a start. Followed...
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I took the Learning Design for the Water Cycle and refashioned it to run a session in which I would explain and demonstrate the use of the micro-blogging platform Twitter as part of a 7 week series of such courses on Social Media. My first iteration came out at 3 hours 35 minutes, despite my planning it all in a Google Doc. Clearly I hadn't been keeping an eye...
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The two learning designs are indentical in activities, timings, descriptions of what is done and how delivered - except one is called 'Water Cycle' and the 'template' is not. Like a running order for a regular TV show, take the BBC's One Show, we know that time alloted will be filled with a particular thing: an introduction, a guest speaker, a slot to show and...
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Done. I don't know how long I was meant to spend on this part of the week's exercises but it has been worth every minute. Possbly 4 hours?
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
What a joyous way to end the week. OK, I'm on a screen. OK, I'm even mixing work and pleasure, but I revisited the Learning Design I created a week ago and used the following Monday. I have now edited that to offer it as a plan for what we did on the day - it still runs to 2 hours which makes it more of an online workshop that a traditional lesson, but we...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I love Google Keep. I use it to make lists, prioritise and plan. It is simple because of the extraordinary complexity that exists behind it: I can add an image or images to each list, I can colourise any list, I can turn a list into a tickable list ... and I can move items around, tick them off, share a list with others and save the entire thing to Google...
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I'd love to see further iterations of this. A colleague said the other day, with great expectations for e-learning - when will it be as simple as Amazon? i.e. Intuitive. This of course would need investment and proclude it as an Open Educational Resource - investors like to get their investment back with a return. Not that I know anything about finance!
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@MariaRodriguesDidier So good I had to do a short Screencast explaining it as demonstration of the Learning Designer. I must add my own to the Padlet - I was too ambitious, and on the day able to be more relaxed with the timings. However, I had not expected a 1 hour class to run for 2 hours. I don't know if that is a good thing or not! In that instance as a...
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I then need to have a proper go at using the interactive elements. In most cases students will be 'in class' for a set period of time, 90 minutes, which is what we used to call a 'double class'.
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I'm now digging deeper and have gone through saved designs, and on to education sector, suitable for FE and as the pie chart looks very different I know that 'Using Video to Showcase a Skill' will work better for a compare and contrast. My intention is to compare and contrast three very different designs before forming a view. I have already used the plan for...
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@TomWorthington Bespoke learning design outside education is quite a task with a bespoke blue-print drawn up for the content, though it may still be built on a common platform with its specific affordances. I rather think the Learning Designer is a terrific way to simplify drafting, especially if you want to save time. The value comes once you as an individual...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
The three examples are really the same thing three times over. The timings are identical with the word skill, literative review or poster replaced from time to time. Perhaps this is the point? That the pattern when analysed like this can be very similar, even if the topicis very different. I would suggest that 1 minute for a teacher to go over each in turn a...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
A great start to the week. Or ten days. I do tend to get behind, or get ahead depending on the time/energy I can give it as like others I'm in the front line taking teaching online and supporting others doing this.
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Very well and what a mind blow to see '1000 students' down as the class size! Finite measures are given for timings that students can adjust to suit their own interests and needs. A little, and keeping it simple is a lesson worth our baring in mind. A student may hit 'play' but not watch a video (or read the transcript), may open a document and not read it ......
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I've been a fan of Gilly Salmon's five stage model and e-titivities for a decade. I even have my own set of coloured bricks ostensibly to help with planning. I think she has adjusted her model, the three elements and the five steps a little as when designed nearly 20 years ago the Tech was a major component for success or failure - so there had to be a...
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Differentiation in pure self-paced online learning is easy to achieve because high functioning can push ahead, or take up additional challenges if they wish. The problem is for anyone getting behind, feeling they are getting behind, not supported and dropping out. All of this is addressed readily in the class. Blended requires a mix and match of the too:...
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Yes, breaks would be a great addition. Even more so online where people are on laptops, or phones - they need a break from the screen for a number of reasons: ergonomically it is bad for the body (who is ever sitting correctly?), and bad for the eyes (looking at a screen). That said, will people not take a short break whenever they wish? A break is an active...
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I know a review is what colleagues will want. A simple comparison with what they know. My take on this is that the Learning Designer is a mutable 'blue-print' or 'smart template' rather than a platform itself. That instead of using a Google Doc, Post Its on the wall or lines on a whiteboard to plan elements across a session this puts it in one place, with the...
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I'm glad that the concern about workload and anxiety isn't as great as I have found with colleagues, some of whom are extremely anxious about how they can take a live workshop demo like class and put it online. We are learning to do so much lately why not? Well, I'm not taking swimming teaching or coaching for obvous reasons! But motor vehicle maintenance?...
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Wow! Well, I have gone through all the steps entirely as events got ahead of themselves I found myself executing the plan with a 'class' that should have run for an hour but was still active after 2 hours. Ok, 'Adult Learners' who had the option to leave at an hour but my deliberately 'open' approach allowed them to contribute a lot and being democratic I...
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Is there research to indicate when given 10 minutes to undertake a task whether students take an hour or 1 minute? And how this relates to later outcomes? Can a student spend too long on a thing ? Of course, if they do nothing they can make no progress? We take the proverbial horse to water but will they drink? And if we don't do we know and what can we do...
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Goodness. I'm going to get out of the bath to do justice to this set of tasks ...
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We have a lot to learn from you that we could apply here in England!
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There is nothing more frustrating that a colleague coming along to show off how they have made a tool no one has heard of 'sing'. Are we about to ditch the thing we are still mastering to climb his learning curve? You can end up forever 'giving something a go' and not getting far enough with anything. No wonder some teachers want to give up - or take the rest...
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How did you manage it?
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Good for you and I so wish others would have your sense to do this! We have to work with what we've got, not think of ourselves as multi-media interactive producers who can make platforms sing, in VR when too often our students don't have the device, the space, speed or bandwidth. We can't 'ditch the Zoom' as mooted somewhere, but we can do the Zoom or Meet in...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I won’t believe it until I have tried to deliver it and learnt from the experience. My full resonse runs to 1702 words, so I'll keep that for another place. I have a habit of relfecting at length and can type faster than I can think it which makes for interesting reading days later. I wrote that? Did I? Really! Well today I disagree.
I go for tables, and...
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@DianaLaurillard Since posting this we are opening up Chat for different groups, slowly forming cross department chats and set up 24 hours a go a support group (private) on Facebook is alive and buzzing - I hope we can add something on LinkedIn to for the more serious discussions.
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Anwynne Kern
@AnwynneKern sounds like my kind of thing :)
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Anna Raneri
Do educators need to make time? To change their priorities? To drop something? Do they need to be paid for this ‘additional’ time or just paid as in the corporate world for ‘all hours required ...’ ?
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What’s the solution to fatigue? So far I take Sunday off from devices but it isn’t enough. I’m ending up online several evenings during the week too.
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@ChrisG change in any organisation takes time, imagination, leadership and commitment = cost. At the best of times it is stressful but with a positive approach and excellent, consistent communication it works. I’ve only experienced it in the corporate world though with big names like the AA and RAC and retailers reinventing themselves on a grand scale. I feel...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Dare I say ditch the tools and go retro? You still need to be using Meet or Zoom but you can then hold up a mini whiteboard and like wise students can doodle something on a piece of paper and hold it up to the screen. Thinking of which in one of our earliest Zoom Town Council Meetings ever we did a group shot coordinated by the Town Clerk where each councillor...
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i laugh at us all, clearly we work in education because not one person has stuck to the instruction of posting just 2 recommendations - I sneakily got in 5 or 6 under the umbrella of ‘extensions’. Very good list!
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I totally agreed about Screencastify and having become the resident champion at College I’m the one running webinars on its use. It’s becoming second nature for me to turn to Screencastify as I might email or WhatsApp.
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Nearpod is becoming the must have. Better than Jamboard or PearDeck if you can only pick one?
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Google Chrome Extensions = a bit of a cheat answer because I use several extensions all the time. These include TabResize especially when on a laptop and wanting to quickly reconfigure a couple of windows evenly side by side or one above the other: Magic Cursor so that when sharing a screen my cursor is big, bold and not to be missed ! Bit:ly to shorten...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Screencastify = vidéo of the screen with or without the presenter with or without annotations and a cursor that can behave like a torch literally ‘shining the light’. Add voice and thumbnail to any slides or other presentation quickly for asynchronous responses and playback, use it for feedback on any document or project work with the all important face and...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Trying to get a study group together is sadly unlikely at this stage just days away from the expectation that all delivery is online. However, I do contact a group of around 30 colleagues every month or so and will put the idea to them - perhpas a few will be able to follow this. There is resistance still to the idea of 'collaboration' in some areas or from...
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The experience of teaching online is mixed. There is both FE and HE provision at our college. Personally, I coach swimmers part time - no pool time, but how could I provide coaching or teaching classes to young athletes? Do we totally reinvent our practice to deliver exercise? Do we concentrate on classroom like work? At college the transfer to online works...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
There's a lot to juggle and you feel like you're on the spot with so many things to think about, but here's a positive - you're in your own space and they are in theirs. And we are all human and people are forgiving when things don't work, and even admire you for giving something a go - so long as you have backups. The simplest back up is webcam and a...
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My concern is that too many students are expected to work from home without the device, space or support that we as educators might hope for or even expect. Trying to work on a phone from the back of a car because you can get no piece and quite in the flat with mum/dad and siblings for example. And can this student afford the cost of using his/her broadband...
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We remain so niave in education, or simply grossly under resourced. Students need significant support to identify 'who they are' early on so that schooling can be individualised rather than trying to get everyone over the same hurdles at the same time. The most absurd thing in UK education is not to allow students to stay back a year or two in order to get the...
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Rory Bremner and Robin Williams come to mind as well known ADHDers. But this 'high octane' and functioning type is probably less common than the low octane, depressive, non-functioning and potentially suicidal type. I have had periods of being seriously 'down' thinking myself unemployable, or would have to be freelance as I have been most of my career, or not...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Engaging and enlightening. I need the latest copy of DSM :) Our extended family over three genetartions has a plethora of disorders - we even like to marry into families where the same kind of things have been happening which means it pops up again with the next generation. I do wonder if certain disorder types are attracted to each other ... it tests us as...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I've spent time around children age 6 up professionally (and as a parent) for the last 20 years and in different formal and informal settings > in school and in sport and at other activities. With a new year or term, sometimes sooner, sometimes it takes a week, you know where a child is showing behaviours that will disrupt what you are doing, and will hinder...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Andrew Webb
So I was sent to boarding school age 8. Decades later a bunch of us share and discuss how it was given that since we have in different ways been diagnoses as dyslexic, having learning difficulties or ADHD. I also have a family member with children who only started school at 7. That sounds like a far more suitable starting age ... so long as the child has had...
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Hyperactive as a child my mother was told 'tire him out' so I was taken swimming every day. She had the luxury of not working. This is the mid 1960s. Diagnosed 35 years later I eventually decided I had to pay for CBT which the NHS would not provide. It made me aware that whether I'm ADHD or not that i saw the world differently and behaved in ways which wasn't...
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Pills or CBT or both. And lifestyle adjustments. Don't run a bar.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
I don't think anyone in our family reaches adulthood much before the age of 50. Somehow after all the tight medical criteria until now this interiew somehow noramlises it. And you can get a degree. And have a job ... or a lot fo jobs. And it runs in families. I think my wife has exchanged life with an ADHD brother for life with an ADHD husband. I am less...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Yes. Bluntly I can see why a diagnosis of ADHD was reversed. A keeness of mind, incessant curiosity and an interest in many things is not a problem. My experience from childhood hyperactivity to adulthood is in stark contrast to my brother in law whose 'oddness' was spotted early, disrupted his education and with depression and anxiety has made functioning...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Interesting.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Fascinating. I conjucture, but instutionalise someone with ADHD and how will that help or hinder? I'm thinking here of a boarding school rather than a juvenial detention centre. Where there are parameters is the ADHD in any way managed or contained? Where the stimuli are curtailed? Where exercise tires you out?
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Everything is on a spectrum; lets give this spectrum a scale from 1 to 5. To be diagnoses six and then five (it reduces with age) symptoms must be present at the level where they cause impairment ... lets say they have to be at a 4 or a 5. So what about the person who is just short of 4 on most criteria? Are they a bit ADHD, or not ADHD at all? Or functioning...
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Tank a tank of water. For each symptom drip a drop of ink into the water. There are the symptoms. Mix it up. The symptoms are still there - but no longer visible. You're not going to notice if someone is ADHD at a party, in a demonstration or in the middle of a war. You will notice if they are in a class for 90 minutes being taught Maths.
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Its tough to isolate and diagnose, hard to fix as all the parameters are fluid and then for the individual how they get on will depend so much on their family and background. Tolerance and accommodation is easier said than done if it is lifelong and impairing to the point of not being able to hold down a job. Or pay bills. Or look after yourself. But give this...
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I have to wonder if living in America brings out the disorder in the person. And if you're insured why not get the diagnosis?
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I've come to think that in the UK ADHD is a badge to wear if you are or are seen to be 'creative' - which suggests they are not ADHD at all.
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
If you willing to pay for it and you're on the spectrum you'll get the ADHD diagnosis. In the US this is covered by insurance companies and 'Big Pharma' keen to sell a drug to every disorder and in the UK through private practice. I'm sounding cynical, maybe I'm just playing Devil's Advocate. Or maybe I'm saying that because it has to prioritise where it...
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Camilla Dessing
@CamillaDessing Don't given ritalin to someone with an addictive personality along with the ADHD as you'll create a drug addict, not 'cure' the ADHD. We should get away from 'a pill' for everything and find a way to give people time and support.
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Jonathan Vernon replied to Andrew Webb
@CorinneAbraham-Wallace It isn't a gift for those a long way down the ADHD spectrum because it so disables their ability to function - at least in 21st century Britain. I rather think that the 'village' used to take raise and look after its own however a child grew up in the distant past, and the right family can support this too - even the role religion has...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
What is the UK and European view of DSM and its editions? Does diagnosis based on what it says vary? Does the NHS have a higher 'bench mark' as it were for when a condition does or does not exist? Might someone by ADHD in the US, but not according to the NHS?
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Impulsively curious to the point of statis. I was a hyperactive child age 5 or 6. I was diagnosed ADHD in 2002. This was overturned on a trip to the the adult ADHD Service in London. I don't suppose having a couple of cans of Stella beforehand would have influenced the outcome in any way. Exactly as my mum was told in the mid 1960s - he's too clever and...
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Jonathan Vernon made a comment
Quite a team lined up! Well done!
