The Wales-Wide Web

A quick thought about Services oriented architectures in education. OK its not something that everyone is thinking about but if, like me, you come back from a series of meetings to find your electricity cut off, then strange things occupy your mind.

Anyway, I was in Birmingham, UK earlier this week working for the JISC e-learnng programme which is attempting to develop a Services Oriented approach for e-learning (for more on this see the JISC elearning programme web site).

It occurred to me that generally we have tended to envisage services being created by institutions or by institutional stakeholders (including teachers). The learners role is to consume services.

Taking on board social software and Web 2 ideas (to say nothing of modern pedagogies) - it may well be that learners will have a major role in the creation of services.

Technorati Tags: e-learning, education and training research, informal_learning, Open content, pedagogy

On my way to a meeting of the OECD Open Education Resources project. My weather widget tells me it is minus 15 degrees (mind the weather widget is not to be relied on).

Anyway before I go - I am posting the presentation I made together with Julia Silies at the first meeting of the Bazaar project last week.

The presentation, called "Developing an Architecture of Participation", looks at how we can use ICT to support the development of communities of practice. Nothing new in that , you might say. But the real point is that many projects talk about communities of practice. Few actually develop anything resembling a community, let alone a community based on practice.

So I think we need to re-examine the ideas behind communities of practice (the first four slides are all from Etienne Wenger's web site) and consider how these ideas are applicable (or not).

I was not there for the presentation but it seems it sparked a long and useful discussion. Hopefully Sara or Julia will post the main points coming out of that discussion.

Technorati Tags: communties of practice

I am busy finishing off a project application for the EU Leonardo da Vinci programme. As usual I am totally fed up with the endless repetitive questioons, with trying to understand what the questions mean and what they are looking for and with trying to match something I want to do (and think is important) with the somewhat abstract categories that EU policy deliberations dictate.

OK - EU project procedures are somewhat strange. But it is not limited to the EU. And it is an important issue. Much of the innovation - at least in the use of ICT for learning and in vocational education and training - depends on project funding. In European universities 'core' funding is being constantly reduced. Project funding is no longer the icing on the cake but a integral and important part of any innovative research programme.

There must be better procedures for allocating this funding. In this respect I must praise the UK Higher Education JISC programme. JISC issue many calls for proposals. Most stipulate that proposals can be no longer than 10 - and in some cases - 6 pages. Having also worked as an evaluator for a JISC call, ten pages is perfectly adequate for conveying an idea and activity. There is an argument that if someone cannot explain clearly in ten pages what they want to do then they have not thought out the idea properly.

I suppose the length and complexity of EU proposals operates as some kind of filter. But I fear it serves to filter out many of the best and most innovative ideas.

Technorati Tags: European_projects

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Pirates pursue a political point:

The Copyright issue is not going to go away. This is from todays Guardian:

"Richard Falkvinge decided to start a political party at 8.30pm on New Year's Day. He hoped to get about 2,000 online suporters by February. In 36 hours he had 4,700, and had to temporarily shut the site.

Thus was born the Pirate party, Sweden's newest political organisation, marking the point at which file sharers moved from swapping songs to trying to change the political landscape in the next general election in September. Its ambition is simple: abolish copyright and patent laws."

Technorati Tags: Open content, Copyright

Interesting article by Jeremy Hiebert on e-portfolios - picked it up through Dave and I am sure it will excite more comment.

Jeremy and Dave speculate that the Personal Learning environment (PLE) is in essence what the e-portfolio was supposed to be, before it became hijacked by vendors and institutions trying to turn the concept into a single tool used to measure student achievement.

PLEs essentially are being conceived as a selection of leaner configured and controlled tools, allowing individuals to develop their own work spaces, their own communities and their own working methods.

PLEs may interconnect with institutional learnings systems but critically that is for the leaner to decide. And institutional provision will be aggregated, mixed or worked with alongside inputs from outside the walled gardens.

Now on to Jeremy's diagramme.

The problem I see with this is the separation of leaner profiling from leaner activity (and this is reflected in the direction of the arrows). There is much interest and activity in learner profiling as the importance of informal learning is increasingly realised (and being cynical accrediting and examining bodies see a new market opening up). But to be effective leaner profiles must be dynamic. they need to be updated regularly to reflect new learning and to reflect new sources of learning.

Besides profiles of past learning and experience and of future aspirations, learners need a way of recording and reflecting on their knowledge base, on their ideas which will change as they work and learn) - which goes beyond a blog and far beyond a tree file structure. George Siemans has stumbled towards this with his idea of connectivity but he isn't there yet.

That is the bit I still can't work out how we do with the PLE and requires in depth discussion .

Technorati Tags: e-learning, e-portfolios, eportfolio, informal_learning, Personal_Learning_Environments

I had been holding off reporting on the OECD meeting on Open Educational Resources in Malmo last week until I has the time to write something longer and coherent. But given that an interesting debate has broken out by email on the subject of Open Content this afternoon - in the context of the forthcoming Open Culture workshop in Italy in June - i thought I would post my email reply in the hope of opening out the debate.

"There was a lively session at the workshop on the sustainability of Open Educational Resources.

Paul Dholakia from the Connexions project presented a number of different models for sustainability. Stephen Downes contested that all these models - at the end of the day - rested on scarcity. he proposed that for fundamental change we needed to break down the divider between producers and consumers in order - in my words to develop an ecology of production.

There was also some discussion on quality. One quality measure was branding - seen as a marketing and sustainability factor by larger institutions. The Hewlett Foundation are promoting this approach. there was some opposition to this from some of us who saw the large institutions as trying to claim ownership of the idea of Open Educational Resources.

There was also a discussion as to whether or not peer review processes - prior to publication were effective as a measure of quality. OER's are contextuialised through use. Quality can then only truly be measured within context of use. Quality could better be measured by developing a meta data trail on the use of resources - rather than previewing prior to their use."

Technorati Tags: Open content, Open source, oss_education

This is Etienne Wengers "fundaments of a community of practice, via Wilfred Rubens:

• Define a domain of knowledge. This is important for a common identity.
• Create a sense of community (relations, trust, shared practice).
• Make sure the community is meaningful for the practice of the participants.

Technorati Tags: communties of practice

Have been laid up with a bad cold for the last few days - hence the lack of posts. But I have a little brain power returning.

In the backlog of emails I found this interesting question.

"If you wanted to announce/publicise a prototype tool for creating, editing and viewing report's on student's work, where would you go? What lists or websites would you approach? I'm asking on behalf of a friend who has developed the tool.

This is a web application written in java which will eventually be released under an open source licence. So the goal at the moment is just to find out if there really is a strong enough interest in it, or something like it, in the community of potential users."

I am not sure of the answer. Posting on Source Forge does not really reach the education community. Do we need a space of our own for developing communities around Open Source projects in education?

Any ideas would be very welcome.

Technorati Tags: Open source, oss_education

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Aleks Krotoski: Gamesblog:

This one has been hanging around in my editor for a couple of weeks . Very nice short article in the Guardian which suggests that computer games should be included in the school curriculum. I posed this around the office and met with a horrified response. But if we teach literary criticism and increasingly media criticism why ignore games which have become part of mainstream culture for young people.

"Only independent critical consumption of other games divines the underlying message of a game from the social context in which it is played. Unfortunately, given the rampant misunderstanding of the content of computer games, it may be some time before games criticism is included in the school curriculum."

Technorati Tags: puppy

This is an important publication so I am quoting the press release in full.

For non UK readers JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee. JISC works with further and higher education by "providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities to use ICT to support teaching, learning, research and administration."

"Supporting institutions, informing choice

JISC sends guidance on open source software to all colleges and universities

24th Feb, 2006. JISC today issued a briefing paper to all colleges and universities in the UK to raise awareness of the issue of open source software. With almost every further and higher education institution in the UK making using of open source software, and with the European Commission and the UK Government giving their support to its development and deployment, it has become a central issue for institutional management of IT systems and services in education.

‘Open source’ refers to software whose source code is openly available to be modified by end-users, in contrast to proprietary software. While such software is already in use in colleges and universities, it is rarely yet part of institutional policies and strategies and there are still a great many misunderstandings concerning it.

The new briefing paper comes after guidelines issued last year by JISC for its projects and follow from the Government’s published policy which, in 2004, set out guidance for the exploitation of publicly funded software development. In its latest guidelines, JISC – supported by its advisory service OSS Watch - advocates the use of open source as the default for software development as well as providing guidelines on copyright, licensing, trademarks, patents and development practice.

Colleges and universities spend millions of pounds on ICT and, with open source increasingly being considered a viable and cost-effective option, they are looking for independent and informed guidance on the choices open to them.

Niall Sclater, VLE Programme Director at the Open University, which recently selected the open source Moodle as a core component of its VLE, said: “By fully engaging in the Moodle open source community we are pooling our resources with other developers working across the world to enhance the software by adding new tools and features, and improve its accessibility, robustness and scalability. While continuing to utilise commercial software, we see open source software (and the skills to exploit it) as an increasingly necessary component in our overall systems architecture.”

Co-author of the new guidelines Sebastian Rahtz, director of OSS Watch, said: “Including open source as an option in ICT keeps the focus where it should be – on technical and end-user requirements for ICT solutions, and not on who has the glossiest sales pitch.”

JISC’s Development Director (Systems and Technology) Bill Olivier, said: “JISC sees open source software as an important component in developing a sustainable ICT infrastructure for UK higher and further education. This briefing paper sets out JISC’s position clearly, providing institutions with the information they need to make informed choices. JISC also emphasizes the separate but complementary role of open standards which is key to enabling institutions to integrate both open source and commercial products in their ICT infrastructure according to their priorities, needs and available budgets.”

Technorati Tags: Open source, OSS

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.

Technorati Tags: e-learning platforms, open source, social software

I have submitted a proposal for a symposium to the Alt-C 2006 conference. The theme of the conference is 'Next Generation Learning' and my proposal is entitled 'Personal Learning Environments: challenges in next generation learning'.

The abstract focuses on the different issues involved in the development and implementation of Personal Learning Environments (thanks to Terry Anderson for his contribution to this).

Next generation learning issues include

• What affordances do PLEs provide for new pedagogic approaches to teaching and learning?
• What are the implications of PLEs for subjects and disciplines?
• How can we move from teacher or expert driven learning to peer group learning? I would rephrase this to How can we use PLE's to encourage and support self-directed learning?
• What will be the role of teachers, technical support and coaches in supporting PLEs?
• How can informal learning be supported and recognised through PLEs

Next generation learner issues include:

• What skills and support do learners require in order to develop and manage their personal learning environment?
• How will learners scaffold and plan their learning?
• How will learners present and validate their learning?
• How will learners develop support networks and affinity groups - both peer and ‘expert’?
• Will PLE's exacerbate the so called "digital divide'?

Next generation technology issues include:

• What will PLE technologies look like and what functionality will they support?
• How can PLEs be made portable and interoperable?
• What middleware requirements are there for PLEs?
• What is the role of standards in the development of PLEs?
• How will autonomous agents be used to effectively link learning resources and learners
• Who will support learner owned PLE's?

Next generation providers issues include:

• How will providers collaborate in supporting personal learning?
• How will providers deal with the loss of control implied in the movement from VLEs to PLEs?
• How will providers approach the issue of assessment and accreditation?
• What are the funding implications for providers?
• What privacy, control and authentication issues do PLE's create?

Technorati Tags: e-learning design, e-learning platforms, Persanal Learning Environments