Trevor Collins's profile document
Description for Trevor Collins
Trevor Collins
Trevor Collins
Trevor
Collins
Senior Research Fellow
I am interested in the development and use of technology to support learning and discovery. Current areas of involvement include inclusive education and fieldwork.
7f3833196e34aa383a4a30f2c6efe149de887918
The Open University account for Trevor Collins
tdc5
Trevor Collins's membership at KMi
@drtrevorcollins (Trevor Collins on Twitter)
Trevor Collins's participation in Topic Accessed Video
Topic Accessed Video
Topic Accessed Video
Judge the educational effectiveness of linear and non-linear video elements
Topic accessed video is a prototyping system intended to allow authors to judge the educational effectiveness of various mixes of linear and non-linear video elements. A structured index of topics, based on printed study units, can be used by the student to control the video.
Trevor Collins's participation in The Virtual Microscope
The Virtual Microscope
The Virtual Microscope
Directly manipulate photorealistic rock sample slides
The Virtual Microscope allows students to directly manipulate photorealistic rock sample slides. In the simulation they can rotate the slides and use a polarising filter.
Trevor Collins's participation in Heronsgate Middle School Site
Heronsgate Middle School Site
Heronsgate Middle School Site
Developing rich multimedia with schools and the local community
Our work with schools and the local community has shown that engagement with all forms of learning increases when learners create their own rich multimedia content. A wide range of the children's science, technology and arts projects can be found on the Heronsgate web site.
Trevor Collins's participation in Virtual Spring Collaborative Microworld
Virtual Spring Collaborative Microworld
Virtual Spring Collaborative Microworld
Networked virtual science
A demonstrator project to show how a real teaching problem could be tackled with networked Virtual Science. The aim was to create an environment in which the procedural aspects of the transformation of observation to data, and data to symbolic representation, could be brought out clearly. The shared microworld allows children to collaboratively collect data, make predictions and plot graphs. For older children, the graphs developed may then become a virtual spring balance for 'unknown' masses.
Trevor Collins's participation in ELC
ELC
ELC
Empowering Learning Communities
This project is investigating and developing organisational learning technology that is community-centred rather than user-centred, or even learner-centred. It is looking to improve our understanding of how learning communities work best. It is beginning to develop a number of demonstrations and projects in this area, all to show how appropriately community-centred technology can enhance learning in communities.
Trevor Collins's participation in KMi Planet
KMi Planet
KMi Planet
Online Newspaper
KMi Planet is an online newspaper managed entirely by intelligent agent software. The software undertakes the mundane tasks of alerting readers, soliciting, gathering, and formatting stories, integrating these tasks in a compelling fashion with minimal overheads for the in-house reporters and maximal benefit for readers. KMi Planet has been used successfully for a number of years and now contains 100+ stories. A number of customised versions are now running in corporate and educational enviroments.
Trevor Collins's participation in Subtle
Subtle
Subtle
2004-11-01
2005-10-30
Semantic Ubiquitous Technologies for Learning and Exploration
The SUbTLE project builds on the results of two separate EU projects, the work of the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) on the CIPHER project and the work of the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) UserLab on the MOBIlearn project.
One of the outcomes of the CIPHER project was a set of tools for exploring annotated digital resources. The MOBIlearn project produced a number of models for guiding the design and development of content for mobile learning. The SUbTLE project aims to build on these outcomes in order to produce a set of educational tools for facilitating learning in mobile contexts.
Trevor Collins's participation in Virtual Tours
Virtual Tours
Virtual Tours
QTVR virtual tours
A demonstrator project to show how QTVR virtual tours of museums and other significant buildings might be linked to virtual representations of documents- that may themselves be embellished with annotation and hyper links to course materials
Trevor Collins's participation in Tactile Multimedia
Tactile Multimedia
Tactile Multimedia
Point, click and watch might become drag, feel and think
The 'interactivity' of multimedia turns out in many cases to be a fairly passive experience for the user. This demonstrator project was intended to show how point, click and watch might become drag, feel and think, and the ways that this can change the learning experience. A range of tactile effects have been added to a 'how it works' topic with the intention of encouraging a more analytic manipulation of the simulation models, and a deeper reflection on their working.
Trevor Collins's participation in FirstFlight
FirstFlight
FirstFlight
Development of virtual science environments
Debunking the myth that the Wright Brothers were lucky mechanics - the project shows how they used rigorous scientific methods to make their first flight. On the web site you can try out a simulation of the Kittyhawk flyer.
Trevor Collins's participation in Web Lab
Web Lab
Web Lab
Calibrate, and provide a context for networked simulation environments
Web Lab is an attempt to calibrate, and provide a context for, networked simulation environments. Shared, web based activities are used to complement and extend classroom science, allowing resources that could not be made available in the classroom or lab to be directly controlled and monitored through a basic browser interface. This means that shared planning, execution and documenting of the experiments can involve students and teachers in several schools.
The control problems of distant sensors systems soon become apparent with Heronsgate School's Mars Buggy environment. As does the important idea of program generalizabilty- the same program that works in the classroom maze also works on Mars (temporarily located in the KMi). Other lab environments currently being developed include the ultra low speed wind tunnel and the web leaf
Trevor Collins's participation in CIPHER
CIPHER
CIPHER
2002-04-01
2004-09-30
Communities of Interest Promoting Heritage of European Regions
CIPHER is a two and a half year project funded by the European Commission under the theme 'Heritage for All' that started in April 2002. The aim of the project is to develop innovative technologies and methodologies to support Cultural Heritage Forums, beyond current virtual galleries or museums, that allow visitors to investigate cultural artefacts, and produce their own personal and shared spaces. Visitors will be supported by advanced storytelling and visualisation tools. The Cultural Heritage Forums to be developed during the project are "Irish Cultural and Natural and Heritage", "Nordic Heritage through Storytelling and Historical Artefacts", "Shared Heritage of Central Europe" and "Tradition of technology innovation in South Central England".
Trevor Collins's participation in ReFLEx
ReFLEx
ReFLEx
2006-01-01
2006-12-31
Resources For Learning by Exploration
The ReFLEx project is exploring how semantic web technologies could be applied to support students' use of OU course materials and related online resources within an integrated learning enviornment.
Trevor Collins's participation in Architectures for scripted media objects
Architectures for scripted media objects
Architectures for scripted media objects
2007-07-02
A partial solution to the reusability paradox
Developments in the underlying media technologies provide the potential for a new flexibility in the development of e-learning materials. It is now possible to create scripted media objects with a rich embedded pedagogy of expository structure and learner interaction.
The difference between scripted media objects and conventional multi-media resources is that they are designed to share parameters derived from their local context and to communicate with each other. This allows them to be customised by course authors within a simple web-based architecture and offers a potential solution to one of the major problems of open-source media reusability, how to create flexible media objects that are not pedagogically empty.
scripted media objects
- view all media as flexible, programmable objects, defined by external parameters for mode, configuration, overlay, position, text, etc
- configured initially by contextual control parameters and then dynamically
- communicate with other media objects and remote servers
provide
- malleable graphic representations and interactivity
- layered complexity allowing alternative levels of description
- shared communication between users
Related papers
http://weblab.open.ac.uk/related-papers/interaction_enquiry.pdf
http://weblab.open.ac.uk/related-papers/layered_media.pdf
Trevor Collins's participation in ERA
ERA
ERA
2007-10-01
Enabling Remote Activity
ERA (Enabling Remote Activity) is an Open University project that supports remote participation by students in fields studies trips. Using a wireless network, digital stills and video cameras and two way audio communications, students are enabled to gather data and otherwise interact with colleagues in remote locations.
The project has supported Earth Sciences summer schools in 2006 (Kindrogan) - 2007 (Heath and Reach), providing local network access and internet connectivity to the field. Future summer school support is planned for 2008.
This website will tell you about the project, the equipment we've used, and introduces the team.
Trevor Collins's participation in Eurogene
Eurogene
Eurogene
2007-10-01
2010-09-30
The first Pan-European Learning Service in the Field of Genetics
EuroGene is a European Commission supported e-ContentPlus project concerned with providing high quality semantically enriched educational content in genetics. The objective of the EUROGENE project is to migrate toward the more efficient development of high quality didactic material on genetics through the guided editing and assembly of educational packages based on the IMS learning design metadata framework and the sharing of different types of learning objects between content owners, in 14 languages. The EuroGene consortium brings together16 partners in the field of genetics from 11 different countries.
The primary role of KMI within EuroGene is to apply tools and methods for content annotation, content authoring and assembly and the navigation different learning pathways through the available content.
Trevor Collins's participation in Bletchley Park Text
Bletchley Park Text
Bletchley Park Text
2008-05-20
Using mobile and semantic web technologies to support the post-visit use of online museum resources
The Bletchley Park Text system is an information service provided for visitors to Bletchley Park, the home of the British Government's Code and Cipher School during the Second World War. The Park is now a museum dedicated to telling the story of the work done there and the influence it has had on our modern day communications and computing technology.
Visitors to the museum identify the items of interest to them by sending SMS text messages containing keywords taken from labels on the exhibits. These messages are later used to select relevant resources, which are organised into a number of views and presented as a personalised website for the visitor to explore when they return home from their visit.
Trevor Collins's participation in Personal Inquiry
Personal Inquiry
Personal Inquiry
Designing for evidence-based inquiry learning across formal and informal settings
The Personal Inquiry (PI) project is a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and researchers from CREET and KMi in The Open University. The aim of PI is to develop a new approach of scripted inquiry learning in which students aged 11-14 can use personal technologies to guide scientific investigations that span the classroom, home and field locations.
Activities will be based around topic themes - Myself, My Environment, My Community - that engage young learners in investigating their health, diet and fitness, their immediate environment and their wider surroundings. These topics are key elements of the new 21st century science curriculum that requires students to reason about the natural sciences as a complex system and to explore how people relate to the physical world.
Other partners include Hadden Park High School in Nottingham, Oakgrove School in Milton Keynes, ScienceScope, a company that develops sensing and datalogging equipment, Nottingham Museums and Galleries, Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre and Gulliver's Eco-Park, Milton Keynes.
PI is a three year project funded by the UK ESRC and EPSRC research councils.
Trevor Collins's participation in DECIPHER
DECIPHER
DECIPHER
2011-01-01
2013-12-31
Digital Environment for Cultural Interfaces; Promoting Heritage, Education and Research
Digital heritage and semantic web technologies hold out the promise of nearly unlimited access to cultural knowledge. The problem is that cultural meaning does not reside in individual objects but in the patterns of knowledge and events, belief and thought that link them to each other and to the observer. This is why story is so important to the communication of, and meaningful understanding of culture.
DECIPHER is developing new solutions to the whole range of narrative construction, knowledge visualisation and display problems. It will change the way people access digital heritage by combining much richer, event-based metadata with causal reasoning models.
This will result in a reasoning engine, virtual environment and interfaces that can help curators and visitors to present digital heritage objects as part of a coherent narrative that is directly related to the user's interests. This will allow the user to interactively assemble, visualise and explore, not just collections of objects, but the knowledge structures that connect and give them meaning.
Trevor Collins's participation in DiscOU
DiscOU
DiscOU
Discovering Open University Content from Other Online Resources
There is a growing base of open educational content being made available online. At The Open University, this currently includes 650 units of course material on OpenLearn and 3,800 audio and video podcasts. With such content available, discoverability of educational resources becomes a major challenge.
DiscOU is a resources discovery engine relying on a semantic index of Open University Open Content. It semantically analyse the content of an online resource, and match it by similarity to other existing Open University content to retrieve the most relevant pieces. It currently works with BBC programme pages.
Trevor Collins's participation in SPICE
SPICE
SPICE
2020-05-01
2023-04-30
Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement
The aim of the SPICE project is to develop new technologies and methods that enable groups at risk of exclusion to actively participate in culture through a process we term citizen curation.
Citizens will be supported in taking part in curatorially-inspired activities such as collecting, storytelling and exhibition design. The technology developed in the project will enable citizen groups to share their own collective view on life through culture and heritage, as well as understand and appreciate the alternative cultural viewpoints of other groups.
The process of citizen curation will be co-designed and evaluated through case studies in five countries: Finland, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Israel. In each case study a museum serves as a hub to support citizen curation with specific target groups including older people, asylum seekers, young people living with illness, Deaf people and children from different religious and secular communities.
The SPICE project is supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme.