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Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles - Robin Good's Latest News:
Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles

Been desperately looking for free pictures lately to try to brighten up the usual dull project reports. And when aimlessly surfing my RSS feeds - diversion tactic from getting down to work - stumbled on this brilliant listing of free photos.

incorporated subversion » Un-Managing Learning Management Systems - A possible future for online learning:

Interesting debate opening up on Scott Wilson's first piece on Learning environments of the future. This is James Farmers take on the question - followed by a reply I have left on his site .....I am still trying to write a substantial post but will keep posting bits until I finally get it together.

James says "Take, for example, a typical tertiary student. In any one semester they may well be enrolled in four units each with an online presence each lasting effectively 13-14 weeks… now if each unit has a community and you ask that student to join these communities and keep a blog in each one… the question arises as to whether they would or not… and I’m betting that they wouldn’t (I certainly couldn’t be bothered). Factor into this the matter that they don’t ‘own’ their blogs (the community owns them), they most likely will just get archived / put away somewhere after the term has finished and the fact that probably (certainly presently) their ability to format / develop their bog individually is limited to, if their lucky, a new banner… and I think you’ll get some pretty unmotivated learners.

However, if that learner has their own blog ‘outside’ of the central, managed environment then things can start to look a bit different. Let’s say that in this case they are studying four units and they can simply create categories for each one (so postings relevant to that unit can go there and to their main blog if appropriate), that that category is then aggregated into the ‘central’ area (where unit guides, copyrighted study materials, core materials etc. can also be found) and that this blog also serves as a portfolio cum social tool for the student in question (as each learner has also been furnished with their own aggregator). The student in question owns the content, they are able to develop their blog as they choose and do with their content as they please, they are able to develop an online presence over an extended period of time and become parts of communities through their blog (communities that will form as naturally as communities form in f2f college) and they are able to subvert the technology in many wonderful ways (podcasting, photoblogging, vogging etc. etc.). It’s also their responsibility… and that is a great teacher in itself."

My reply follows:

incorporated subversion » Un-Managing Learning Management Systems - A possible future for online learning:

Interesting debate opening up on Scott Wilson's first piece on Learning environments of the future. This is James Farmers take on the question - followed by a reply I have left on his site .....I am still trying to write a substantial post but will keep posting bits until I finally get it together.

James says "Take, for example, a typical tertiary student. In any one semester they may well be enrolled in four units each with an online presence each lasting effectively 13-14 weeks… now if each unit has a community and you ask that student to join these communities and keep a blog in each one… the question arises as to whether they would or not… and I’m betting that they wouldn’t (I certainly couldn’t be bothered). Factor into this the matter that they don’t ‘own’ their blogs (the community owns them), they most likely will just get archived / put away somewhere after the term has finished and the fact that probably (certainly presently) their ability to format / develop their bog individually is limited to, if their lucky, a new banner… and I think you’ll get some pretty unmotivated learners.

However, if that learner has their own blog ‘outside’ of the central, managed environment then things can start to look a bit different. Let’s say that in this case they are studying four units and they can simply create categories for each one (so postings relevant to that unit can go there and to their main blog if appropriate), that that category is then aggregated into the ‘central’ area (where unit guides, copyrighted study materials, core materials etc. can also be found) and that this blog also serves as a portfolio cum social tool for the student in question (as each learner has also been furnished with their own aggregator). The student in question owns the content, they are able to develop their blog as they choose and do with their content as they please, they are able to develop an online presence over an extended period of time and become parts of communities through their blog (communities that will form as naturally as communities form in f2f college) and they are able to subvert the technology in many wonderful ways (podcasting, photoblogging, vogging etc. etc.). It’s also their responsibility… and that is a great teacher in itself."

My reply follows:

Open Forum Europe - Open Skills Initiative:

Don't know how I missed this before. Many thanks to stuart Yates from the UK OSSwatch who told me about it.

This looks a great initiative - there are a sereies of projects in europe looking to promote education and training in Open Source and i think agreement to adapt this frameowrk woudl provide a degree of coherence to these steps. Need to look at this in some detail. But what interests me even more is the way the framework has been designed to allow a common standard for education and professional development without forcing unessarily rigid stanadrisation of learning.

In Europe major effort is being expended into trying to develop a common framework for qualifications - effort which in my view is making little headway. this is largely because moves towards standardizing qualifications fails to recognise the diversity of contexts in which learning takes place and the different cultures which have not only shaped our education systems but also impact on the organisation of learning at work. Will come back to this in next few days....

"OpenForum Europe introduces a new OSS skills initiative "The OSCoP Competency Framework" a definition of the skills needed by IT Professionals to excel within the open source environment. It has been developed in conjunction with many of the major open source product providers (including HP, IBM, Novell, Sun, RedHat), and endorsed by independent organisations such as the LPI.

The Competency Framework is at an early stage of development and nows needs review and input from the OSS community before the next stage of drill down is undertaken. We therefore welcome your comments and suggestions on both the concepts behind and the current limited detail within the OSCoP Competency Framework.

New occasional item for this blog - graffiti. Will be adding - hopefully in picture form in the future - the best graffiti I see from around Europe. Send me your favourites for inclusion.

The first come from a wall opposite the library at the University of Utrecht (sadly camera battery was flat);

"Bilbo failed, Bush has got the ring".

Well I liked it anyway.

OK - this blog is mainly about education - and pretty much focused on technology. But it was always supposed to be a bit wider and especially to be more political than it has become of late.

Not just because I am interested in politics but because I still believe that ideology and politics are fundamental to the shaping of our future used of technology.

So no apologies for this post - which is a copy of my April column for the Welsh radical newspaper Seren (Socialist, Environmental and Republican News. For the benefit of the uniniated - Ponty is an abbreviation for Pontypridd - a small town in industrial South Wales. Clwb y Bont is the local Welsh club (and the lace where Tom Jones started out.

Back from a couple of days in Barcelona. I went there for a meeting f the European Commision funded MAFF projec t. MAFf is not really my scene - stands for Making Social Agenices Fit for the future. I don/t know a lot about social agencies - my role in the project is to develop a benchmarking tool for the project partners to test. But it was interesting to observe a different community of practice and to see what are their concerns and how they work together.

As ever it showed the problems of establishing shared meanings between people from different academic and disciplinary backgrounds, different languages, working in different systems and above all from different cultures. And it reinforced my belief we cannot transfer 'best practice' from one culture and system to another - but we can 'mutually learn' from another. Even more, working with people from a different system and culture provides insights into our own practice and reveals the assumptions that we operate in - what seems natural to us from one culture may not be in the least bit natural to someone from a different context.

It is also always a reality check to work with a community not so heavily into the learning technologies that dominate this blog and the community of practice around education technology. Great talk in the restaurant with Andreus - was trying to explain to him what a blog is and found my explanation totally inadequate!!

Obviously I am not the only one thinking about the politics of e-learning. Just got this bizarre email from the British Education Technology Association (Becta) Research Network list server. I want the politics of e-learning discussed. Elections seem a good time for this. So what does the government do - require Becta to close the list.

I hereby declare that until the 7th of May this blog is open to discuss the politics of e-learning.

FROM ICTRN:
Dear Members,

This discussion group will be suspended during the election period (from the dissolution of Parliament on Friday 8 April until Friday 6 May. All services provided by non-departmental public bodies (such as Becta) must comply with the General Election Guidance issued by the Cabinet Office
(http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/propriety_and_ethics/publications/pdf/electguide2005.pdf) which includes the suspension of discussion groups.

From today, no messages will be posted to the list until
7th May.

Scott Wilson's Workblog:

Great to see you back in the blogsphere, Scott. I totally agree - but from what direction do we approach changing this paradigm.

"Institutions will of course try to incorporate ICT for learning in a way which preserves there status, mission and organisational status. As learning opportunities - or contexts - continue to multiply through learners accessing all kinds of information and knowledge from different sources - one answer is that institutions will just whither and die. I am not sure I am happy with that. there are key issues regarding access to knowledge and learning and institutions have in some ways preserved that notion. A privatized jungle will only benefit the privileged.....

So..just as we develop visions of what an ICT based learning environment may look like in the future, we need to develop a new idea of what the (networked) institution of teh future might be and of how the education and training systems could be reformed to positively utilise the benefits of ICT.

Like Dave I have been messing with diagram based on Scott Wilson' Future VLE - the visual version'. And I had been hoping it might inspire a bit of debate on the blogs.

Unlike Dave, I have not managed to produce anything I am happy with - so I am very pleased to be able to post a link to this.

Think it is a good step forward. Few comments. First it seems to miss out the role of formal learning programmes - though that would be no problem putting in. In fact Dave has incorporated access to 'Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange' - phew what a mouthful. Then I would ask what is the nature of the brokering., I suspect he is referring to a technology brokered role. I think what is missing is the role of a tutor, facilitator or guide for human mediation in learning which goes further than the role of social networking.

Second bit is what is done with information or knowledge. dave has ability to publish and includes a personal file repository. What I am missing here is something which allows scaffolding of knowledge - building of something more than just a field repository. I want to be able to see how my knowledge structures are changing as a result of new ideas and knowledge. this could be a wiki like thing or a mindmap - linking it all together. It certainly needs the ability for smart tagging to allow association between different (activity driven) bits of learning and possibly the ability to post those tags.

But having said that Dave's post takes us forward in recognising we learn from different sources.

NB Thanks to Mark Berthelemy for alerting me to this post.

NNB Anyone interested in trying top put together a project to develop this set of ideas.

Becta have backed down on the closure of their mailing lists for the duration of the UK elections. This afternoon an email was sent out re-opening the list (see below). A victory of sorts for common sense. And clearly Becta were embarrassed by the publicity that they attracted. But the whole affair has raised other issues.

First is the role of politics in e-learning. Research and practice cannot be dissociated from decision making and policy. The second is the role of Becta in 'owning' the lists. Maybe lists of this sort need to be under the control of the community as a whole and not in the hands of a government funded agency.

"Good news! Following discussions between Becta and the office of the Permanent Secretary Government Communications, it has been decided that our discussion group will be reinstated as of today.

We will post all outstanding messages this afternoon.

We apologise again for the interruption to the service, but are very glad things can get back to normal a month earlier than anticipated."

Please be sensitive to the fact that we cannot post any messages that could be perceived as political in the run-up to the Election.

This post has three purposes.

first I wanted to try some pictures in my blog and see if it works.

Second I am bad at taking pictures and my friend Daniela is great at it - I want to persuade her to share her photos through Flickr.

Lastly - I think Daniela' s project is brilliant - see more below to see what she said about her robots in an email to me and hopefully if there is some interest she will add more.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Making a science out of applied idiocy:

I love this story. I am sick of unsolicited emails inviting me to conferences I might be (or usually am not) interested in going to.

And sick of the emails informing me of the good news that the deadline for submission has been extended due to popular demand (oh yes?). This mob are one of the worst. What the hell is a "World Multiconference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics" anyway. This is academic spam. It should be treated like any other kind of spam. Unsolicited invitations to conferences are just as bad as unsolicited invitation to take out a loan, inform me of the result of the Lottery Winners or obtain cheap software. Looking at my spam box I see I've got one entitled "we want you not your money. That sounds like a conference - only they really are after your money. As for the excuse - that it had been accepted without review as the reviewers were late and it would be unfair to reject it - I don't believe a word of it.

Right on to the MIt students.

The research paper was clearly the work of experts. It had a long, baffling title and its authors were familiar with key topics such as "simulated annealing" and "flexible modalities".

Submitted to the World Multiconference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), a computer science event to be held in Florida in July, it was promptly selected for presentation.

There was just one problem: it was complete gibberish. A random collection of charts, diagrams and obtuse lines such as "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67", it was generated by a computer program written by three Massachussetts Insitute of Technology students.

Article continues
MIT graduate student Jeremy Stribling, 25, and two friends created the fake paper because they were tired of being sent emails by WMSCI organisers soliciting admissions.

Mr Stribling said he was "definitely surprised" when Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, was accepted, but "we kind of suspected they had low standards". He added: "They ask for submissions, but once you get in you have to pay a $400 (£220) fee to have your paper published."

I'm off to Finland tomorrow. Speaking at a couple of conferences and at a workshop.

On Tuesday I' m making a presentation at the Fenix-seminar in Dipoli on Knowledge Creation in the  Open Content Community.

Wednesday I'm speaking at the ITK-workshop in Hämeenlinna on Views and future visions in the field of open source and education and learning.

Friday I'll be at the ITK-International Symposium on  Open Source Software and Open Content In Education speaking on 'Opening Frontiers in Learning – The Growing Movement in Open Source'.

If any readers of this blog are going to be at any of these events it would be great to meet you. Drop me an email. Willtry to upload presentations during the week. getting parse errors at the momebt!

Have been in Finland since Monday. Interesting week - despite the weather. The Finns have a word which means 'backwinter' - the winter that returns (every year) after it should have gone and it should be spring. Its about -3 outside and snowing.

Anyway back to business. Monday I was one of two guest speakers (the other was the marketing manager for Nokia) at the - TEKES FENIX conference in Finland. TEKES is the funding body for Finnish technology development and FENIX is the programme for interactive technologies. According the the organisation's English language web pages, the "FENIX programme focuses on research and development on software technologies and applications where interaction between end-users and information systems has a significant role."

"The main goal is the development of user-friendly application technologies and products/services for consumers, corporations and public bodies. Instead of one-off projects, the programme targets product-based businesses and projects which contribute to competitiveness and know-how in the long run."

It was a big conference - more than 200 in the audience - they gave me three quarters of an hour to speak on Knowldge Creation in the Open Content Arena and a big, big screen. Had to go soon afterwards - hard to know what people made if it though some people I have seen since were kind enough to say I had inspired a lot of discussion- I am not sure if it was a bit radical for them but seems to have created a bit of a stir on the Finnish blog sites - see here for example (I have no idea what she or he is saying).

I like speaking at these big events - but am very cynical as to the value. I think more knowledge comes of the more interactive sessions in smaller venues.

Wednesday I did have such an opportunity to speak at a workshop and a great event it turned out to be.

I spoke at a pre-conference workshop on Open Source Software organised around the Interaktiivinen Tekniikka Koultutuksessa konferensi - Interactive Technology in Education Conference.

The conference is big - according tot he English language pages of the web site it is the largest conference in Finland about information- and communication technology in educational use. "ITK'05 -conference asks "Pedagogy - where can it be found? ITK'05 is searching for the best practices and teachers’ point of view on eLearning. New theoretical models and research projects are in the interest of ITK as well."

The workshop was great about 20 people interested and asking questions. The speaker after me was Timo Valiharju from Mediamaisteri Ltd in Tampere. He gave an excellent talk on how expertise was being developed in the Open Source industry. Mediamaisteri support Moodle and have two employees in the core development group. sadly I could not stay longer as had to finish a report but did get the chance in the bar to meet Teemu Arina from the Flosseposse (well worth keeping an eye on their shared blog) in Helsinki who were behind the Fle 3 project.

One thing we talked about is whether the phenomenal success of Moodle is holding back the development of other and more innovative OSs applications in education. Teemu seemed to think there was room for Moodle as a fully finished and stable product as well as other more experimental applications.

Today have been meeting with Pekka Kamarainen - who says he is going to start a blog - right on Pekka - and his colleagues form Jyveskula Polytechnic. More on that in another entry.

Third and final presnentation of my Finish trip - this time the theme was 'Opening Frontiers in Learning - The Growing Movement in Open Source'. Just before we started they told me that as one speaker was ill I had about 45 minutes to present - quickly added new slides in. Think I misjudged by audience this time - slides were OK but lots of my presentation f was too techncial. Trying to talk of the significance of social netwrking when some of audience did not know what a blog was. Mixed audiences at these conferences a bit difficult - really need newbies and advanced sessions - lots aeree coming to sysmposia on Open Source but have very different nees in tersm of learning and discussion.

Stil some great questions following the presentation especially re metadata, learning objects and the social orgnaisation of the Open ~Source sofwtare community.

Afterwards discussions continued in the coffee bar with Samuli Karevaara, Jussi Kurikka and Mika Saarinen.

Wide ranging talk including how to move from islands of innovation in the use of ICT in education to more generalised innovation in practice and how to recognise and build on innovation.

One point made was the need to accept that many projects and developments will despite the best efforts of project developers fail. This is inevitable and provides a valuable learning opportuinty. However the present climate where all projects must be 'seen' to suceed prevents us learning from failures.

More dicussions about the relationship between formal, background knowledge and continuing learning. To what extent does formal knowledge acquisition need to ber controlled, ordered and sequenced?

The point was made that whilst e-learning really is about learning - and that learning is often episodic, conjunctual and non sequential, e-learning system are mainly for the benefit of managing learning and for teaching. Thsi is a big contradiction.. ..perhaps we would do better if school and universities concentrated on face to face and traditional teaching and e-learning was focused on learning which takes place outside the formal eductaion systems.

Finnish joke came up which I had not heard before - girl goes into the attic and finds a typewriter - she rushes down - "daddy, daddy, I've found a printer which works in real time". Reminds me of my duaghter who once asked me comuters worked before we invented electricity.

Just found that Teemu Arina from the Flosse Posse has put up a great blog of the session on Open Source at the ITK conference (Interactive Technology in Education) in Finland.

Am trying desperately to get the presentations on the web but my server is giving me proxy errors. Hoping we can sort this out tomorrow.

There are an increasing number of project producing Open Source applications for education and training. In the UK all the projects under the Jisc e-learning programme are being required to make products available as Open Source. I applaud this - I have never understood why public funding should be used to produce software - or anything else for that matter - and release it under a closed license.

It does raise questions of sustainability though - the 'traditional' Open Source model of releasing and hoping to build a community around it may not offer enough space or support to allow further development and testing of products.

I also worry that Source Forge may not be an easy environment for education people to find applications which meet their needs.

there seem to be lots of people talking about setting up new services for OSs in education in this area - but no one seems quite sure how to proceed. Would welcome any thoughts or ideas - have I missed something?

At last - I have managed to get all my presentations from Finland up on the web. They can be downloaded from the Open Source Software in Education in Europe (Siggossee) web site.

There are three presentations.

Knowledge Creation in the Open Content Community - presentation at the TEKES FENIX conference in Finland in April 2005.

Researching technology for tomorrows learning presentation at the pre-conference workshop on Open Source Software organised by Mediameiteri around the Interaktiivinen Tekniikka Koultutuksessa Konferensi - Interactive Technology in Education Conference in Finland in April 2005

Opening Frontiers in Learning presentation at the ITK International sympoium on Open Source Software and Open Content in Education at the Interaktiivinen Tekniikka Koultutuksessa Konferensi - Interactive Technology in Education Conference in Finland on April 20 .

Open Source Makes School Breakthrough
By eGov monitor Newsdesk Published Monday, 25 April, 2005 - 13:33

Tend not to post these to this blog - normally put then on the SIG Open Source Software site - but I think this is significant.

"Forthcoming government report to pave way for greater OSS use in UK schools

Becta, the Government's lead agency for ICT in education, is set to release a new report which will say that schools could save significant sums by switching to open source software, eGov monitor can report.

The landmark report will show that OSS can be implemented successfully in schools and present documented examples of cost savings from its use.

Becta's report, based on a study of 15 schools, will state that open source office products have been demonstrated to offer schools a cost-effective alternative to proprietary software.

Among the key findings will be that primary and secondary schools using OSS substantially reduced the total cost of ownership per PC. Support costs - typically accounting for more than half a PC's total cost - showed
the biggest reduction.