I was in Flensburg on Friday for a meeting with colleagues from the University who are working with me on a number of different European projects. The projects are focused on education and training, not Information and Communication Technologies, but like many European projects, include the development of ICtT based tools and the use of an electronic platform for communication. That's my bit of the work. But of course I have to work with other members of the project team in developing these tools.

I'm lucky with these projects in that Flensburg has employed a couple of very good young project managers. They do not know a lot about ICT but they are interested and keen to learn. And like at so many other meetings earlier, I found myself explaining how social software can be used for communication, sharing and learning. Simple things like how to install and use Skype. More complex things like how RSS works. How to use wikis for shred editing of a document. Oh - and newsreaders and blogs. And tagging and Flickr.

I'm more than ever convinced that we have great software tools for sharing and learning. But the ability to configure and explain the tools lies beyond the expertise of the average educational project team. University computer departments are not interested. Private sector consultancies and research institutes lack the expertise. they also lack money and tend to employ 'kid programmers' who do a good or bad job in developing products. But the products are not the main thing. The most important step is sharing knowledge and expertise - for the educational researchers to be aware of the potentials of the software applications and for the programmers to understand the needs of users and learners. That is still not happening.

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