On 2 December 2003 I wrote "Blogs should have a significant starting point. Mike Malloch from Knownet set me up this blog over a week ago. And I have spent a week trying to think of something significant to start with. What could be better than Werder Bremen going into the winter break top of the Bundesliga."

Some 560 blog posts on Werder Bremen are alas only in second place in the Bundesliga. But we beat Lazio Roma in the Champions League on Wednesday. And that, I think, is significant event enough for launching the Wales Wide Web at its new home on the Pontydysgu web site.

Why the move? When I started the blog I was working part time for Knownet. However soem two years later we parted tracks. I wanted to refocus my work on the pedagogic application of new technologies. I left the blog on the Knownet site. And indeed Mike and the others from the Knownet crew have been good to me over the years, sorting out the occasional bug and fixinfg the site when I have pasted goobledygook code into my posts. A big thanks to them all.

But the time has come to move on. Pontydysgu - for whom I now work full time - have a new and exciting web site. And moving over to the new site will allow me more room to experiment with the design and functionality of the blog. Plus, over the last six months, I have become increasingly fond of Wordpress. I will be adding the 560 or so back posts from this site to the new Wales Wide Web home.. But it may take a couple of weeks. So please be patient. And next week I promise you a positive flurry of goodies.

If you have a blogroll link to the Wales Wide Web please change this to www.pontydysgu.org/blogs/waleswideweb

Look forward to talking to you.

I am on the road for much of the next two weeks.

Sunday, I go to Lisbon where I am taking part in a panel discussion at the e-Learning Lisboa Conference. And Tuesday evening I move on to Barcelona where I am speaking at the UOC UNESCO Chair in eLearning IV International Seminar being organised by the Open University of Catalonia.

Early Friday morning I travel back up north to the European e-Portfolio conference at Maastricht where - together with Serge Revet - I am organising a workshop on Personal and Organisational Learning Environments.

Then a couple of days break. On October 24th and 25th I will be speaking at a meeting on 'Trainers in Europe' in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Will try and make as much of the papers, slides and the rest available here. In truth its not all new - quite a bit of stuff will be remixed - though with some new takes I hope. So for each event i will try to put up a post providing links to different resources about the presentation - if only for those new to this blog.

In the meantime, if any of you are attending any of these events and would like to meet up for a beer, just drop me a line.

I ma in Vilnius for a meeting of the Fe-ConF project - Framework for elearning Contents Evalauation.

Despite the name it is a good project - a lot of thoughtful contributions.

I particularly liked the contribution from Minna Lakkala from the University of Helsinki who talked about the pedagogical design of technology enhanced collective e-learning. She referred to the sociolodical and epistomological infratstructures necessary for content sharing.

And - by serendipity - whilst listening to Minna a couple of emails arrived on the Becta list talking about cultures of sharing.

The first was from John Potter who said: "In a strand recently about web 2.0 it became apparent that in a culture where league tables are no longer published there are greater opportunities for sharing and innovation. Ewan McIntosh and the experience in Scotland seems to bear this out. Having schools in competition publicly in this way seems to inhibit all sorts of potentially useful collaboration and innovation. Tricia's story seems to bear this out. Perhaps this and other pressures on teachers within the system really do make it difficult to share and to innovate and to examine what it means to be a teacher or a learner in 2007. "

Nick Morgan suggested the additional factors regarding a willingness of share learning materials in Scotland:

"Professional shyness - many teachers arent confident enough of the quality of the resources they produce, and are happy to use their produce but reluctant to share it publically and thereby invite critical comment.
 
Earning - A minority of teachers are at the other end of the spectrum, so confident about their own product that they won't share it without payment being involved.
 
Copyright - uncertainty about who owns the rights on the resources, or an instruction from their authority employers not to distribute. A common view: If a resource is produced on local authority equipment and in employers time, 'it' belongs to the authority and some authorities don't see why they should let anyone else use those resources for free."

Technorati Tags: Open content

Welcome to the first of the autumn series of Sounds of the Bazaar. We are proud to announce we have teamed up with Online Educa Berlin to bring you this series. In each of the coming issues we will featuring some of the speakers at forthcoming Educa Online Berlin Conference plus our usual mixture of news and features from the educational technology, open source and open content communities. And we will be podcasting live from the conference. But more on that next month.

We’ve got some pretty heavyweight guests lined up for future programmes including Ewan McIntosh, Dave Wiley and Jay Cross. We are also launching a new series - the Bazaar Unplugged - designed to provide space for newbies to the podcasting scene. If you are teaching podcasting or using podcasting in your courses please do get in touch - Bazaar Unplugged is designed as a showcase for learners be they young or old. The first edition of the new series - due out in the next ten days - is being made by Pontydysgu intern, Adrian Puscuta, about computer games, identities learning and more.

But back to this weeks show. After the summer break, we had a lot of materials in the can so we have produced you a double issue. More than an hours listening.

In the first of the Online Educa special editions, Stephen Downes talks about changing ways in which we are using the internet for learning. Vijay Kumar from MIT and Toru Iiyoshi from the Carnegie Foundation discuss how the development of Open Education can improve quality. And Seb Schmoller explains the background to the Association for Learning Technology’s accredited member scheme. And Web site of the month features the UK Jisc Emerge community. Plus, I talk about future plans for Sounds of the Bazaar. And there is our usual musical interludes with a series of new jingles.

Of course one hour may be a bit too long for one session’s listening (although we find it goes well with watching football with the sound turned down). So you can access each episode separately. And next week there will be an enhanced version available from the iTunes store (see this site for more details).

The full version features music by Stepping Back, a blues-rock band from France. The featured tracks are from their album “Stepping Back“.
And like in the last volume you find this album and a lot more music published under Creative Commons licences on the great music site Jamendo.com.
Enjoy!

Listen Now:

•  Listen to the full edition of Sounds of the Bazaar [71:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (20)
•  Introduction to the programme [4:19m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (11)
•  Open Education - interview with Vijay Kumar from MIT and Toru Iiyoshi from the Carnegie Foundation [20:08m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (10)
•  Future plans for Sounds of the Bazaar - Graham Attwell [3:05m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (12)
•  A talk with Stephen Downes [17:16m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (24)
•  Seb Schmoller on the Association for Learning Technology Accredited Member Scheme [12:04m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (11)
•  Web site of the month featuring the UK Jisc Emerge community [7:37m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8)
•  Extro to this programme - Graham Attwell: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (10)

I found it hard to believe this email which arrived this afternoon. I've always rated Innovate as one of the best of the on line educational technology mags. And I've got no problems with seeking sponsorship (anyone want to sponsor Sounds of the Bazaar?). But some sort of independence is critical. And inviting the submission of "manuscripts describing uses of Microsoft technology (e.g., Office, SharePoint, WL@EDU) that enhance, extend, or in some cases replace traditional pedagogical or research methods" is just ...I am lost for words.

Just so you know I am not making this up see text below from editor James Morrison:

"We are delighted to announce that Microsoft is the first charter sponsor of Innovate under a new program designed to build alliances with corporate participants in the educational technology community. The sponsorship program will widen Innovate’s scope while ensuring that Innovate will continue to be available as an open access e-journal......

The sponsorship program affords technology providers the opportunity to partner with Innovate to help spread the word about creative new uses of technology that will enhance educational effectiveness. In concert with this effort, we are offering sponsors a voice on our Web site via a new section, "From Our Sponsors." As described in the "About this Journal" link, we will publish articles in this section that focus on (1) how educators use our sponsors’ products to enhance teaching, learning, and administration, (2) the services our sponsors have provided or intend to provide to enhance educational effectiveness, and (3) how our sponsors view the future of education and the role information technology tools will play in addressing educational problems and issues. These articles will
meet Innovates high editorial standards; they will be rigorously reviewed and edited to enhance their value to the global community.

As part of the sponsorship arrangement with Microsoft, we invite you to submit manuscripts describing uses of Microsoft technology (e.g., Office, SharePoint, WL@EDU) that enhance, extend, or in some cases replace traditional pedagogical or research methods. Interested authors should contact me with a brief description of the proposed article and an approximate date of submission. "

Oh my - whatever next - project placement, dog-food adverts?

Technorati Tags: corporate sponsorship

Ok - here is a question for those of you who are geographically challenged.Where is Villach. Well its in Carinthia of course. And Carinthia is In the eastern corner of Austria - near to Italy and Slovenia.

And Villach is the host to the annual conference on Interactive Computer Aided Learning.

Sandra Schaffert from Salzburg Research invited me to take part in a special session on Open Educational Resources and Practices. There were three other presenters, Victoria Hornung, also from Salzburg Institute who presented the excellent OLCOS project, Marcus Deimann from the FernUniveristat in Hagen, Germany presented a paper on integrating Open Educational Resources and Instructional Design and Marco Kalz from the Open University of the Netherlands gave a presentation on recommender systems for finding Open Resources. And I presented a paper by Raymond Elferink and myself on developing an Architecture of Participation.

We had planned a skype conference call to prepare the session but didn't get our act together. But despite this it worked well. the papers complimented each other. They all had something to say. that is not to say we all agreed. I am extremely dubious of the instructional design approach,. But as George Roberts says, one feature of communities of practice is homogeneous difference. I think that the session reflects the emergence of a community of practice around Open Educational Resources.

Anyway, if you want to find out more, here is a bumper package. The paper (click the link below). The presentation (click on the slide above). And a hastily edited audio of my talk.

Developing an Architecture of Participation

>Listen Now:

 Developing an Architecture of Participation - the talk [19:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

document.getElementById('podPressPlayerSpace_173_label_mp3Player_173_0').innerHTML='Hide Player'; document.getElementById('podPressPlayerSpace_173').alt = 'mp3Player_173_0';

Entry Filed under: General

Technorati Tags: Open content, Open source, OSS, oss_education

I/ve written before about the Reflective Evaluation project. It is a two year European Commission funded project, now drawing to a close, which aimed to produce ICT based resources for facilitating self evaluation activities by teachers. Pretty challenging, huh?

At the outset the project coordinators had the idea that this could be done with a tool developed in Powerpoint. The rest of the partners were not so sure. For many of us Powerpoint had little appeal, in terms of its scriptability and attactivess for users. The coordinators, Ira and Gerald form the University of Flensburg, were fortunately flexible and open to new ideas.

Jen, Chris and myself designed a web 2.0 (ish) tool, allowing teachers and trainers to access and answer multimedia questions designed to stimulate reflection, to see and compare with the answers of others and to create their own tools.

OK, it doesn/t go as far as I would like but there are real challenges getting people for five different countries to share meanings and ideas, and pedagogic limitations in the European Commission demand that the questions should be available in each partner language.

But the best bit of the project has been the multimedia. Despite most partners being traditional academic researchers, with limited computer experience, by this weeks workshop all of them were working together, sharing in creating videos and other multi media artifacts. Its creative and great fun.

Want to have a look? Better still, want to create your own learning materials. All you have to do is go to www.refelctive-evaluation.eu and create yourself an account.

NB We are still editing the help videos so you will have to learn as you go. But if you would like more information please get in touch. And before you ask, of course it is Open Source.

Sorry for the lack of entries lately. In the middle of a big re-organisation of Pontydysgu. Many greetings to Peter who has joined us to run the administration. And Dirk is working hard on the launch of our new website. Meanwhile I am hurtling from meeting to meeting.

But there is still time for the odd post here. Some time ago I posted the following question on my Facebook page:

"How can we support informal learning?"

At least I thought I did. What I actually posted was "How can we support informal earning?" What a difference a consonant makes. Well, George Roberts answered the original question:

" I support informal earning through car boot sales and Russian MP3 download sites. CAVEAT: The support of informal earning is illegal, immoral and (I hear) the basis of the economy of Liverpool ;)"

And then I edited the question to my original intent.

Here is a summary of the answers. Thanks to all of you who contributed.

Scott Wilson
Stop hoarding stuff behind passwords and firewalls. Respect informal learning by universally supporting accreditation via APEL.

Jenny Hughes
Who's 'we' ? And what informal learning are we supporting by whom? There's quite a lot of informal learning I wouldn't want to support, ditto a lot of informal learners

Cristina Costa

By creating, enhancing, developing and maintaining a learning environment where participants (not students!) are entitled to an opinion, stimulated to develop their own voice and share what they know while LEARNING what they want to learn!

Steve Wheeler

By giving them licence to use more (any type of) social networking

George Roberts
Once it's supported is it informal? John Cook proposed a continuum: informal (off the radar) via semi-formal to formal. I think "we" can support informal learning by doing formal learning as best we can: open, socially engaged, Freirian, learning-centred.

David Delgado
a) Making it easy to find useful resources for anyone in the organization
b) Making it easy to make connections among people in the organization and sharing their knowledge
c) Encouraging everyone to learn what he needs or likes most in their job

Stan Stanier
I'm with Terry - first we need to identify the what, how and when

Frances Bell

by letting the learner determine the context and content of the learning and then offering support appropriate to that.

Stuart A Yeates
(a) avoidance of over-specified prescriptive assessments
(b) promotion of quality engaging resources

Paul Harrington

I agree with Mr Wassall the first part of the exercise will be to observe how it is happening amongst the 'digital natives' ( don't like the term) - then give them opportunities on our terms to use tech..

Terry Wassall

Good question! First we need to understand how informal learning takes place. Reflecting on and surfacing our own modes of informal learning would be a start, and there are probably many modes and contexts to consider. Then exploit this avoiding formality.

I'm not short our ideas for blog posts at the moment. But I am short of time. And blogging takes time. But hopefully in the next few days I will have some opportunities to get some of these ideas off my chest. And I've still got notes form last weeks Alt C conference which I promised to write up.

For now you will have to content yourself with this picture from the Emerge island ins Second Life. the jukebox connects to the different podcasts I have been making as part of the Emerge project. (If you do visit the island the jukebox has now been moved to an exhibition centre in the star floating over the island(.

I love it. maybe it is flattery. But i am beginning to see the real potential of Multi User virtual environments such as Second Life, not for replicating classrooms on line, but for infomal discourse and learning.

More on this soon - I'm working on some ideas.

Technorati Tags: podcasts, SecondLife

At the UK ALT-C conference for last two days.

Great fun meeting everyone, drinking too much, talking lots etc.

Not overimpressed with many of the sessions though. To my mind far too many of the papers are not sufficiently challenging - and too much is being accepted at face value. (If this sounds too negative, Josie has just pointed out to me teh food is better than last year).

But this morning I did go to a great session run by Josie, Helen and Frances. The session was a Web 2.0 slam. After a brief and entertaining introduction to Web 2.0 tools and their uses pairs participants were asked to make a short (two minute) performance about some aspect of Web 2.0.

And very good the contributions were too. Great fun, lots of participation, lots of getting to know people - hi Sabina and Nicola - and we got to learn things too.

Anyway - if you missed the session or weren't at the conference here is the session wiki - and links to videos of each presentation should be available in the next couple of hours.

Technorati Tags: ALTC2007, social software

At the UK ALT-C conference for last two days.

Great fun meeting everyone, drinking too much, talking lots etc.

Not overimpressed with many of the sessions though. To my mind far too many of the papers are not sufficiently challenging - and too much is being accepted at face value. (If this sounds too negative, Josie has just pointed out to me teh food is better than last year).

But this morning I did go to a great session run by Josie, Helen and Frances. The session was a Web 2.0 slam. After a brief and entertaining introduction to Web 2.0 tools and their uses pairs participants were asked to make a short (two minute) performance about some aspect of Web 2.0.

And very good the contributions were too. Great fun, lots of participation, lots of getting to know people - hi Sabina and Nicola - and we got to learn things too.

Anyway - if you missed the session or weren't at the conference here is the session wiki - and links to videos of each presentation should be available in the next couple of hours.

Technorati Tags: ALTC2007, social software

In an hour I am off to the Alt C conference in Nottingham.

I am chairing a session on international Communities of Practice.

There is a bit of a strange history to this session. We originally submitted a proposal for a symposium,. However it was knocked back. We could, the programme committee said, have a short paper session - 20 minutes. Now the problem - how to fit three presentations into twenty minutes and still have time for discussion.

We decided each presenter should have a two minute video slot. So here are the results - surprisingly it seems to work - each makes a good point in only 2 minutes.

But first the overview - this is the blurb from the application (written by George Roberts).

"Communities exist on many scales and few communities can truly be called communities of practice (CoP) in the strict and elaborated sense as used by Lave and Wenger. Through purposeful engagement with CoPs people progress from a state of peripheral participation towards a state of mastery of the forms and norms
of the CoP (see: Dewey, 1933; Goodman, 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991;
Leont'ev, 1978; Wenger, 1998). This journey is sometimes mirrored by progression in formal education, but as often as not is supported by episodes of informal learning. This may take place in institutions, but more often occurs in the workplace, the home, the community centre and other spaces. At each stage the
learner needs to establish their co-ordinates through a process of establishing self-identity within a community.

The application of CoP theory in instrumental circumstances almost always presumes the pre-existence of groups who share community of practice attributes. Communities of practice are emergent organisations with tacit but clearly identifiable rules and other signs of identity: shared goals, shared values, shared symbolic artefacts. These may be codified but as often as not tacit community rules transgress or subvert codified, formal rules. We start from the position that although it now commonplace to recognise the existence of CoPs, the processes underpinning their development are still poorly understood. In particular, it has been found to be difficult in practice to create or facilitate the development of CoPs.

As a move towards better understanding of community formation, facilitation and development, this symposium will consider three emergent international educational communities of practice working both in and through Web2.0 environments."

And now to the videos.

First up is George Roberts whose presentation is entitled 'Emerging Oxymorons'

Second is Karsten Wolf who presents 'Communities of Practice in World of Warcraft'.

The third presentation is 'Communities of Practice and Identities' by Tore Hoel.

Hope you enjoy them.

Technorati Tags: communities of practice

Interesting article in the Guardian about a new guide by the UK Trade Union Congress on using social networks in work.

The guide points out that employers can legally ban the use of social networks and take action against employees who break such a ban. It also says that employers are entitled to consider social networking content if an employee has applied for promotion.

The General Secretary of the TUC appeals to employers to be reasonable pointing out employees should be able to have a life outside work. The guide goes on to give some sensible advice on the use of social networkls.

But it is this paragraph that I find most interesting:

"Work is a major part of our lives, and staff have always discussed aspects of their jobs in private. Now that online social networking is becoming mainstream, many of these private conversations are searchable by the public."

The use of social networking is redefining conventions around private and public discourses. Many of these conventions are implicit and tacit and of course are heavily culturally defined. In Germany people are much more 'private' than in Wales where we quite freely share information about our personal lives - and gossip happily about friends and acquaintances - with relative strangers.

It may well be that to move forward the debate we need to take what has previously been tacit and implicit and transform to explicit knowledge. Handbooks like the TUCs are part of this process.

Postscript: Just a short moan. News web sites like the Guardian are getting very lax about citations. Whereas once they always linked to original source material now they next to never do. I spent a good few minutes searching for the handbook. If news organisations are going to quote extensively form such a source I think they must provide a direct link. End of moan/

Technorati Tags: social software

I am underwelmed by mots of the Facebook plug-ins (although overwhelmed by the number available. And I totally fail to understand the attraction of applications like Zombies

But the one application which I think is really useful - as opposed to decorative - is my questions. I have tried asking questions a few times on my blog - and have got a reasonable response - but the blog display is in no way as useful as the plug-in for this sort of discourse. My questions is really handy for quickly gathering different people's views on key issues.

And - 9f you do have a Facebook account - my question is "How can we support informal earning?". For those of you without an account I will publish the relies on this blog some time in the future.

The UK telecommunication regulatory body, Ofcom, have just published their annual report.

It is a substantial body of work and I have to admit I haven't read it myself - relying rather on press and radio reports.

There seems to be much of interest in the report. For the first time women webusers have taken the lead in key age groups. At the same time an army of silver surfers has emerged and the over 65s are spending more hours online than any other age group, according to the Guardian.

Predicably young peopel are psending more time on line, with growing use of social networking istes. thsi time spent appears to be at teh expense of watching television.

Much of the BBC radio coverage was taken to the emergence of older people at heavier internet users than youth. Commentators speculated that this was due to the rise of internet commerce and to women using the web for social networking.

However, the preponderance of older users bares out the survey we carried out of the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. We found older workers far more likely to use the web for learning than younger employees (albeit for informal learning rather than pursuing formal e-Learning courses). We speculated at the time this might be due to wider web access for more senior employees.

However, we felt, although could not proof, that older workers felt more at home using the internet for informal learning. Tomorrow I will have a look at the Ofcom report to see if it has anything to say about learning. But it remains my feeling that educational technologists have over-focused on developing learning applications and content for younger students and have failed to see the potential for extending and supporting lifelong learning and continuing professional development through the internet.

The term social networking also covers a multitude of activities. the radio reports tended to assume social networking as a leisure time activity - a replacement or chatting on the phone. Women do more of this than men, the reasoning went. I am unsure of this is true. But I would certainly suggest that much of the so called social networking is actually the use of social software for informal learning.