The Wales-Wide Web

Next week there is a meeting on Personal Learning Environments in Manchester. We have been invited to put forward a 'Position Paper'. Here is mine. It was intended to be much, much shorter, buts somehow grew when I was writing it. As always I would love any feedback

Introduction

There is a buzz at events bringing together educational technologists. That buzz is called Personal Learning Environments. Yet, a year and a half after serious discussion broke out in the edu-blogosphere, there is little agreement on what a Personal Learning Environment is, still less on what it might mean if translated to a learning application. Neither is there agreement on who it is for or who might own or use it. Does it replace VLEs or is it a plug in or additional application? Is it any different to an extended e-Portfolio? There is not even agreement as to whether a PLE should be an application or if it is just a collection of user-configured tools.

This paper will not answer all those questions. Instead it seeks to explain why the idea of the PLE is so appealing and what are the social and educational ideas which underpin the concept of the PLE. Secondly it will look at some of the issues that need to be resolved in a little more detail. Thirdly it will suggest some of the principles which should underpin PLE development and implementation and finally suggest what further developmental activities might be undertaken.

The paper will attempt to blend the educational or learning issues and the more technical issues. Educational technology should be shaped by the users, rather than shape or inhibit learning. Yet even this raises issues. Is the PLE just what it says? A personal learning environment belonging solely to the learner, or should the education system and educational institutions also have a say in the shaping of these tools?

Technorati Tags: e-portfolios, Personal Learning Environments, social software

Auricle:

I'm trying to read my way through all the different contributions for the CETIS Personal Learning Environment Experts Group meeting in Manchester tomorrow (I hate that 'expert' word - makes me feel like a fraud). There is now a wiki set up - http://octette.cs.man.ac.uk/jitt/index.php/Personal_Learning_Environments.

I am particularly taken with Derek Morrison's excellent blog on the subject on Auricle.

Derek concludes his article by saying:

Connectivism and theoretical work related to Communities of Practice/Learning Networks are exactly what we need to provide some sort of conceptual framework to the work being undertaken to develop technology enhanced learning (TEL - possibly a better term than e-learning:) I detect an increasing dissonance, however, between attempts to ground TEL work in connections, communities, and learning/social networks, and the, now open, declarations by some of our institutional leaders (and others) that e-learning is about the 'industrialisation' of learning. Where then will the PLE figure in such an Orwellian view?"

He has hit the nail on the head. The "dissonance" increasingly pervades all discourses around the use of social software in education and provides a dilemma to all those working in 'official' education and training arenas.

Technorati Tags: education policy, PLEs

I'm so far behind with this blog. Last week was the launch of the UK edubloggers in London, the last two days meetings on Personal Learning Environments in Manchester. I haven't reported on either yet though I have about three unfinished posts.

Today I am in Como for the OSS 2006 conference. Tomorrow I will be making a presentation at a workshop on 'Preserving Quality in an Open Environment'. The is entitled 'Learning Designs and Pedagogy for Open Content'.

The issue of quality is one I have been avoiding for some time so I was happy to be forced to think about it. On reflection web 2.0 and social software has a lot to say about quality.

I hope to do a quick remix of my presentation as a movie or at any rate to make the audio available. For those of you who can't wait, here is a PDF of my slides (click on the graphic to download). I am trying to use more pictures in my slides - thanks to Daniela who took a number of the photos featured here (in future I will try top credit all photos I use).

(NB. I have had stray reports of difficulties opening PDFs form this blog. If you should have any problems could you email me).

Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, open source, pedagogy, social software

I'm still completely behind in my postings. I promise I will get around to commenting on the edubloggers meeting and the Personal Learning environment seminar last week. And on the workshop on quality and Open Content in Como. But I am off yet again on my travels - this time to Bristol for a JISC meeting.

I have spent most of the weekend messing about trying to edit a video of my talk last week. More on that later.

But I have also managed to catch a few (well rather a lot) of the World Cup games this weekend.

My friend Lars took me with him to visit some friends on the other side of the river (as we say in Bremen). They have a fabulous community set up for the football.

They live on a modern terraced street. Nearly all the people in the street have small kids and have evolved into a community of their own.

For the football they have converted one of the garage spaces opposite the terrace into a (what?) - cinema, pub, community centre - I don't know what you would call it. But they have got a projector and a screen organized, garden seats and of course, a barrel of beer. Kids roamed in and out. People came and went. And in between the games there was a communal barbecue.

It was a fabulous day. Who says the German's don't know how to enjoy themselves?

Technorati Tags: WorldCup

This is a trailer.

At almost every meeting I have been to lately - and I have been to a lot of meetings - the issue of data ownership and access to data has arisen.

Yes Web 2 is great for allowing mash ups and integrating services to produce rich and interactive web sites. But the reliance on external services from mostly commercial companies does raise a whole series of issues. Can we trust these people with our data? will we still have access to this data in the future.? What is to stop them data mining for their own purposes?

These concerns do not limit themselves to commercial companies. What happens to an e-Portfolio after a student has left and institution. At least one UK university is considering charging ex-students for continuing access to their portfolio.

Later this year, the Bazaar project will be holding a seminar around these issues. We will be issuing a call for position papers. If, in the meantime, you would like to be kept informed about details of th seminar please send me an email.

Technorati Tags: e-learning, education and training research, eportfolio

Still travelling (at Hamburg aIrport at the moment on my way to France).

I have had a frustrating few days in teh last week and have been too dispirited to post much.

Firstly I have been finalizing a report on a project for the European Commission. Why oh why do they demand two paper copies of everything? Why can'[t we submit the reports on CD. It would save a lot of paper, provide much better access to our work and save a lot of trees.

At the same time I have been trying to produce a video version of my presentation at the Open Culture seminar in Como on what I am now calling 'e-learning 2.0, pedagogy and Quality."

for the first version I just tried editing together the audio of my presentation together with the slides. But at 34 minutes that seemed much to long to be useful. So then I tried a new and shorter recording of the talk whilst following the slides. But it was still too long and needed a lot of editing to get rid of the pauses whilst I changed slides.

For the third version I watched the slides and wrote a script which I then recorded. then I matched the slides to the audio rather than the other way round. i am pleased with the results - it is a reasonably slick recording and comes in at about 6 minutes - which is about what I was aiming for.

But can I get it on line - no way? I have tried the Creative Archive, Google Video and Ourmedia - all of which failed with different reasons for each. In desperation, I got up and seven this morning and tried publishing it to .Mac. "There has been an error" was the ever helpful Mac error message.

Something is wrong - maybe it is something to do with my ISP or the file format (Quicktime.mov). If anyone reading this has any ideas or advice I will be very grateful.

I will try again when I return on Wednesday.

Technorati Tags: multimedia

I received the following message from Anne Oestergaard from the Master-Libre lists server (incidentally if any of you are interested in establishing masters courses in Free / Open Source Software this server list is an excellent resource).

I have to confess I haven't had time to follow up the references. But the issues Anne raises seem to me important so I am posting it on.

Anne says: "It seems that the Free- and Open Source Software community is debating this serious "male mono culture issue" after this report has been
published:

"The report states that there is 1½ % women active in the FLOSS community.

That about 80 % of the women have felt discrimination - but on the other hand, some 80 % of the guys claim that they have not been discriminating women.

The report also found that women are being (unconsciously) excluded!"

The full report can be found here and the recommendations here.

Anne is making a presentation on Wome in Free Software at GUADEC this month. In her abstract she asks: "Are women in FLOSS considered as bugs, groupies, or equal partners in their field of skills?"

She goes on to say "most discrimination of all kinds is utterly unintentional, and that kind of discrimination is harder to tackle because there is no evil intent and no-one to directly blame. It still needs tackling and that is in part about making people understand when their culture and actions put off or exclude others."

Anne says: "A lively debate is on going on this list: foundation-list@gnome.org at
the moment: Key words "Code of conduct" and "Women in GNOME"

Technorati Tags: open source

One of the problems with multi media is we have tended to view it as a separate thing in itself. We make and view multi media objects, which are alienated formt he context in which they are made.

I am trying to use multi media as part of my everyday work - normal boring stuff like evaluating education and training projects.

On Monday and Tuesday I was in Arras in France for a meeting of the 'Interests and Desires' project (best project name I have ever known). I am the evaluator for this project. I took along my bag of multi media kit - camera, video, microphone and assorted cables.

For the evaluation i set up a 'Big brother' booth. each of the participants had to sit in front of the camera and answer the evaluation questions asked by big brother (that's right - it was me). They had to keep talking to the camera until someone took pity of them and took their place.

It worked really well. even those who were not so confident in their English (and had spoken little in the meeting) were erudite and communicative. More than that, the presence of the camera seemed to focus peoples ideas.

the use of the media helps people in telling their own stories - this is digital tory telling - not as in sit down and tell me your life story - but tell as story as part of your everyday work life.

I will do a rough edit of the interviews as the participants said they would like a copy.

for the report I am going to produce a strip cartoon, using stills format he interviews and highlighting the main points coming out of the evaluation. The cartoon will be easier to read and will be much more directly and effective than traditional written evaluation reports. If the partners agree, I will post a copy of the report on this blog, not for its content (which is specific to the Interests and Desires project, but as an example of how to use the media.

Technorati Tags: multimedia

BBC SPORT | Football | World Cup 2006 | Teams | Italy | De Rossi explains elbow to Fifa:

Both the Guardian and the BBC have done a pretty fine job reporting the world Cup on the internet. Though sometimes the stress on the translators begins to tell. I love this quote from the Italian coach, Macello Lippi on the BBC football site:

I've left De Rossi to boil in his own soup. He's a fantastic guy but he must change his computer chip

Technorati Tags: football, WorldCup

I had an interesting chat on the phone with Mike Malloch this morning. Mike is one of the few other people i know who can be reliably found behind his computer at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

We were talking (again) about developing social software applications for learning.

Mike made the point that we must test this stuff in real everyday life and work contexts, there is a world of difference between someone sitting down to develop use cases when this is the thing they are doing i.e. installing, testing, using, a service or a piece of software as the task in itself - and using the services and applications as one small part of their everyday working life.

It is only in real everyday application that the different potential uses of these services will become apparent.

I think Mike is right and I think this is important.

Technorati Tags: social software

Since you asked, I'm having a good World Cup. At the moment I'm second in the local university 'tips' pool, as the Germans call it. And if England do the decent thing and lose to Ecuador tomorrow, thus saving us from more footballing and journalistic boredom, I will probably go top. That's without my 10 point bonus for Argentina winning. Although, as the English saying goes, don't count your chickens before they've hatched.

Just before the World Cup started I had an interesting talk with George Auckland, Head of Innovation at BBC Learning and Interactive. George is one of the pioneers of user generated content and has some pretty interesting ideas (I will post again on this later). We got to talking about the World Cup. George told me that he thought this would be the event which would 'make' High Definition TV. Now on this one he got it wrong. Rather than people sitting at home watching wide screen, high definition TV or paying for entry into private arenas with large screens, this is the event which shows what you can do with a projector and a little ingenuity.

I have already told of friends who have put together their own collective viewing arena in a garage. Todays photo is of my favourite World Cup venue - the Viva pub in Bremen. OK, the quality isn't great. the projector is too close to the screen but if it was any further away, people at the back would not be able to see the screen. And the screen itself stands on a chair at the front. But what makes it is the atmosphere, the remote is on the table for the customers to use. At the end of the game someone strolls over and fills in the wall chart. Its local people, getting together to participate in what should be a community event in their comminity. And the beer and food is available all day. Heaven indeed! Viva la Viva.

Context

Two weeks ago I made a presentation at an Open Content workshop in Como. I promised particpants I would post the slides and audio of the presentation. I made a first version using the audio of my presentation- but at 47 minutes it did not make for compelling viewing. I made a second version  - this time redoing the audio whilst following the slides. This came in at about 19 minutes which still seemd too long. I scripted the audio for this version and then edited the slides following the audio. This version seems to me about the right length - though perhaps it could be even shorter.

I intend to produce a series of short videos like this and would be  interested in feedback. it is difficult to guage how long these things should be. Making them even shorter is quite attractive but it means cutting down on the breadth and depth of the content.

For future videos, I will try to produce a full presentation 'pack', including written materials and references.

Technical notes

This is produced using Apple iPhoto, i Movie and GarageBand applications. The vdieo was exported to Quicktime using the preset web movie settings. I am not happy with the quality of the lettering. Any advice on how to get better quality would be very welcome. I suspect the answer may be to produce 2 versions - one a relatively small version like this for downloads and a second, MP4 (?) version which will be too big to realistically download but will provide better streaming quality.