The Wales-Wide Web

Trying to catch up for the missed months postings on this blog.

In February I was at the Learntec conference in Karlsruhe. The exhibition itself was pretty dire. Lots of people and lots of stands - but the products all looked much the same. And the only people that seemed to be buying was the German army who were there in force - with people on the stands rushing to greet them as they passed.

Anyway saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones. The official reason I was there was to make a presenation at the international confernce bit of the show on the use of ICT for learning in SMEs. This was based on a project funded by the European Commission's Leonardo programme and coordinated by Knownet.

Soemone has just told me that the slides and video are available on the web so I thought I would post the rl. had ot do a google search to find them - the url is http://ww4299.kw04.de/ltonline2004/videos.php?datumID=2&kategorie=2#

A couple of quick gripes. First is that the format is realplayer which I don't have on my computer so I can't view the video myself. More interesting is the process. Whilst it is very nice to have high quality video of presentations, the effect was that the presentation took place in a very formal setting. Massive hall - largely empty becuas ethere were only 60 or so pople there, raised stage, big lights so I couldn't see the audience etc. Not a stimulating atmosphere for kicking off a discussion! I do wonder iof pproducing the video so much messes up the process of a 'workshop' that it defeats the purpose.

If anyone does view the video please tell me what you think.

This entry is from my monthly column in the Welsh socialist newspaper, Seren.

Its Friday afternoon, its spring at last and best of all Werder Bremen are striding towards winning the Bundesliga. But I've got a stack of work to do before I can go home and I promised the editor I'd post him my column today. Seem to remember in my head, he sent us an email a couple of weeks ago saying he was producing a special edition on what socialism might mean in Wales. Seems a cool idea but hard to dream up from sunny Bremen.

So I thought I might write a little about technology and socialism. In my spare time I'm a researcher on something like technology, work and learning. And so I got invited to London ten days ago for a conference on just this subject. The conference was at the Institute of Education in the University of London. I always get mixed feelings going o these events. Firstly I'm flattered they asked me - me with my BA from Swansea amongst all these learned professors and doctors. Then while I struggle to understand what they are all talking about I wonder why the hell I came. Then I get angry that these people seem so far away from the real world.

But in this case I stuck with it and learned a lot. The people at the meeting were from all over - with researchers from the USA as well as from different countries in Europe. Most of them were engaged with an idea called activity theory.

The first is the need for a good distributed content management system. Since Knownet went Open Source and started using Plone as the basis of our sites, we have made a huge step in that direction. True, the workflow is still too difficult for many, and it still requires a degree of expertise beyond amy of our project partners to confidently add new items to the site, but we are getting there. The next big step will be an easy to use workflow manager providing an interface for users to place or move content to where they want it.

Another problem is keeping the sites up to date. At the moment I contribute to some 12 or 15 web sites (not all provided by Knownet, I hasten to add). Getting into the flow of each to write new ideas - or just post news - is increasingly difficult.

The answer - I think - is to use my blog as a management tool. In other words, I will write the entries for different sites in the blog and copy them into the right place. At first this will have to be done by sticking and pasting, but Mike, the systems architect at Knownet, is optimistic that we can provide a user interface to do this task. This requires more work on customising Plone - and more development (or a replacement for)of Core Blog - the Zope based blogging tool we use at them moment.

I am ever more interested in the idea of collective blogging - either by just sharing a blog site - or by using a series of interlinked blogs - all contributing to a 'central' web site.

In the next few days I will be writing a number of project news items in this blog.

SIGOSSEE held its first project meeting in February, in Bremen, Germany. Following the meeting the Institut Technik und Blildung, the German partners in the project, issued a brief press release to the local daily newspaper, the Bremen Courier. The story was duly shortened to little more than a few paragraphs and appeared on the weekly feature on university news.

Whilst this may not have caused much local attention, it did get picked up by a number of the German language on-line news services. The result has been a flood of enquiries from the German speaking world, both from individuals wanting to join the Open Source Special Interest Group (SIG) and from newspapers and other media representatives wanting themselves to run features on education Open Source Software. Joachim Dittrich, who leads the project for Bremen, has been kept busy over the last month, responding to requests for interviews.

This does suggest that there is phenomenal interest in Open Source and also a shortage of information. It also shows the potential for the SIGOSSEE and the associated JOIN project. However, it also shows that the projects will have to stay clearly focused, given the present limitations on resources.

A (loose) English language translation of the press release is provided below for other who may wish to adapt it for local use.

Open Source goes Education

Open Source Software poses growing competition for the big software companies. Linux, for example, is taking a big market share from Microsoft in server applications and is even overtaking them in public administration, at least in Germany. There are similar developments in other areas with the growth of the information society including the use open source for e-learning for the education and training market.

At the Institute Technology and Education at the University of Bremen, Germany, experts

in information technology and education and training, practitioners and scientist from nine European countries met in order to discuss the pros and cons of software with freely available source code for education and training applications.

At the start-up workshop of the EU-financed project "Special Interest Group on Open Source Software in Education in Europe" (SIGOSSEE), first steps were taken to build an Special Interest Group (SIG) to investigate and support the use of open source software in education. The SIG group is open to anyone interested throughout the world. Members of three other associated projects from Germany, Estonia and Austria also attended the meeting.

First the use of blogs as a notebook. Second, the idea of production as pedagogy. Third, informal individual and collective learning. And fourth, what used to be known as 'empowerment', now tends to be called 'active citizenship' and what I call 'politics'.

The first I have already written about. I increasingly like using this blog as a notebook for ideas. I often used to scribble them on the back on an envelope, in the pub at then end of the day, or on bits of paper which I subsequently lost or forgot what I meant. Writing them like this makes sure I keep a record - more usefully it allows me to send a quick note to others I think might also like to pick up on an idea.

So what is the idea? First the history. yesterday, I was downloading my emails. Amongst them was the weekly newsletter from the excellent LabourStart . LabourStart, run by Eric Lee from London, provides on-line information about international labour movement and trade union campaigns. It is a fine example of how the use of new technology can be used as an organising and campaigning force.

Blogging is generally said to be like keeping a diary. I think this is wrong (although of course some people do use their blogs like that). For me there is little point in recording that I spent Wednesday evening in the Horner Ecke pub with Lars and we spent two (animated) hours trying to spend Werder Bremen's Champion's league booty and considering the possibility of Basturk moving from Leverkusen, or that on Friday I was in the same pub with Philip and Imke, where we talked of many interesting things including Imke's wedding dress and whether i shopuld move to a new flat. Such things are interesting to me but I can see little point in recording them (although I will write more accolades to the brilliant Werder Bremen in the next few days).

Instead I see of this blog as a notebook - somewhere I can record things of interest to me (and perhaps others) as they occur. Of course, I could write them in a notebook. But, firstly i cannot usually read my handwriting, second I will lose or forget the notebook, thirdly it is very useful (if only fort future cutting and sticking) to have these notes in electronic form, fourthly it is very handy to be able to refer others to my notes on occasion, and, finally I like the writing format of mixing the insubstantial, passing and ephemeral with things I think may be of some longer term interest ( if only to me).

James has posted another entry in the growing discussion on the use of blogging for learning.

As he rightly points out blogging may be of limited use in teacher driven, assessement motivated formal education settings but truly comes into its own for expression and creativity, more typical of informal learning.

A few points here. Firstly, from a European standpoint, it does seem sad when we are developing new pedagogies and exciting tools for informal learning, the EU (and its Member States) seem so hung up on qualifications and on measuring learning.

Second, in my (probably minority) view e-learning has moved pedagogy backwards in the classroom setting. This is not top deny the positive benefit of e-learnng for access and providing distance learning for those not able (or unwilling) to use more tradtional learning infrastructures and institutions. However, despite the espoused constructivism of many early adopters and more recent advocates of e-learning, most e-learning programmes are fairly poverty stricken in pedagogic terms.

Blogging, on the other hand, offers rich, rich opportunties for creating and sharing and for mutual, interactive learning.

What this tends to suggest - is - yes a focus on informal learning - but also another look at the ideas and pedagogies behind the technologies of e-learning and the technologies of blogging. And I think we can develop all kinds of new environments which build on the technology and pedagogy of blogging and provide real learning opportunties.

I think I said this before (but perhaps I didn't). All software has an inherent pedagogy - the problems are that technologists have been reluctant (or unable) to recognise this - and pedagogists have not understood enough of the technology to help shape the design process.

OK - so there are not a great deal of comments or trackbacks here. But do not think the World Wide Web has no influence. Got this fine email from Marc Jones - the editor of the Welsh monthly newspaper Seren - to which I contribute a column with the same name as this blog

"By the way", he says, "my son Huw and I have become confirmed Werder Bremen fans - we watch the Bundesliga every Monday night on Sgorio - a fine example of Welsh internationalism! Cracking striker - Ainson? (can't remeber the spelling)"

The name's Ailton, Marc, or Tony to the fans. Thanks for the feedback. Keep the internationalism going.

But an interesting article for a couple of reasons. Eric is pushing the use of handhelds for books. I am intrigued by the potential of handhelds - but having had a couple over the years have never really used them. The keyboards always get on my nerves. But I suppose for reading a book you do not need to use the keyboard much. Secondly, I am not so sure I can get used to reading on a screen - but I could give it a go.

But the main point to his blog entry is the idea of a Left Book Club in electronic form. I think that is an idea with tremendous potential. Not just to get better circulation for the more well known socialist writers like Chomsky - but for opening up the potential for publishing and sharing ideas to a much wider range of contributers. Of course the web does that. but the web is an uncomfortable media for reading longer text contributions.

Books (and shorter publications) available on handhelds could open up a whole new vista for democtratic and socialist debate .

. And after the turbulence of the student protests against tuition fees it is good to see the Rector is trying to open a dialogue. All questions will be answered it says, by Prof Wilfried Miller, at the meeting on Wednesday.

But what is this at the bottom of the flyer? "Und nach der heissen Diskussion ein kuhles Becks."

Who says the Germans are behind in commercialising education?