The Wales-Wide Web

Ah an all to brief holiday - but I had a great time at the Cambridge festival and will write about it at the weekend.

But now back to business. I have been doing some work for the ICOVET project coordinated by the Deutches Jugendsinstitut. The project is looking at the recognition of informal learning for socially disadvantaged young people. The DJi is featuring the project as its theme of the month on their web site.

the web site includes the background to the project and an interview with Ulrike Richter from the DJi. There is a short article by me comparing the recognition of informal learning in the UK and in Germany. And there is an excellent article by Magda Balica on the potential of the recognition of informal learning for young people from the Roma community in Romania.

Well worth checking out. And it is good to see topical and well thought out presentation of project work on an institutional web site.

Technorati Tags: informal learning

for the last two years i have written regularly on this blog about the dangers of privatization of education and more particularly about the risk from privately owned technology companies.

And so it has come to pass. Blackboard have announced that it has been issued a U.S. patent for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods. The patent, they say, covers core technology relating to certain systems and methods involved in offering online education, including course management systems and enterprise e-Learning systems.

Already Blackboard have issued legal action against Canadian company DesiretoLearn, claiming infringement of patent. Obviously this poses a threat to large parts of the Open Source educational technology movement.

I could go on but to be honest I fail to find words which adequately describe such stupidity. See Stephen Downes for a summary of what people are saying.

Two immediate things need to be done. we must put more effort into the campaign against software patents in the European Union. And Blackboard claim to have patents pending in Europe. Does anyone know what this means and if there are ways of opposing them?

Technorati Tags: Copyright, e-learning, no patent law, Open content, Open source

Innovate - E-Books: Why They Matter for Distance Education—and How They Could Get Much Better:

Just to prove I do read the occasional journal article (by the way Innovate - the Journal of On-line Education is well worth tracking). In this article Donald Rothman says: "If ever a promising technology existed for education—and distance learning in particular—it would be e-books." I think he is right but Rothman himself raises the problems - poor screen quality on reading devices, lack of standards, DRM and a lack of context and place with electronic books as opposed to paper versions.

I think we can assume that screen will get better and the new OpenReader standard may sort out that issue. So what about the other issues. I can't see digital publications totally replacing paper based books - just as television and now video has not killed the cinema. But I can see very big advantages for e-books in education.

For one thing they are easy to update and potentially much cheaper than paper copies. Furthermore there is huge potential for teachers and learners to produce and share custom publications. The problem is the DRM. One of the joy of books is they can be shared. I often give away for swap or lend novels which I have read. Sometimes I just leave them behind at airports in the hope someone else will pick them up. DRM stops this. Ironically the e-book industry - in its obsessive pursuit of DRM - may be preventing the development of the media.

Technorati Tags: e-learning, technology

The Blackboard issue isn't going to go away.

For a quick round up of global edu-bloggers reaction see Stephen's latest post on the subject.

Now what about the situation in Europe? Blackboard's press statement claims patents are "pending" in the European Union.

The application can be found on the European Patent Office database and is indeed marked as pending. Since I posted this the html copy of the document has disappeared. you can now download it as a PDF here.

But now things start getting very murky. Firstly what can be done to oppose an application? It is hard to find any information on the EPO website.

However more can be discovered on the Gaus wiki which appears to be based on a project aiming to make patent applications more transparent. The Blackboard application can be found on the Gaus site here.

Gaus explains the status of an application as follows:

• A patent starts its life as an pending application.
• The applicant can at any time choose to withdraw the application.
• The EPO can choose to reject an application.
• Or EPO can choose to grant an application
• An appeal or opposition procedure can be commenced within the first 9 months after the patent is granted (grantedrecent)
• After 9 months the opposition procedure is only possible at national courts. At this time the patent is GrantedOld
• Patents that are currently under appeal are BeingAppealed as opposed to patents that were appealed at some time.
• EPOs appeal court can choose to revoke a granted patent after an opposition.
• Or EPOs appeal court can choose to maintain the granted patent.

So far so good. But now it gets more complicated. Firstly the European Parliament rejected attempts to introduce software patents, although it is a fairly safe bet to suggest the European commission will try again at some point. Secondly, there is doubt over the legislative status of the European Patent Office and whether it is able to impose patents on European Member States. This is very messy. For more information follow these links.

• Question by Adam Gierek MEP (13 April 2006)
• Answer by the Commission (18 May 2006)
• TBA decision T 0424/03 - 3.5.01 on "Clipboard formats I/MICROSOFT"
• Provisional patent publication EP0717354: Data transfer with expanded clipboard formats (Microsoft)
• Community Patent analysis:
• Permanent link to the press release

Links come courtesy of the FFII . The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards.

Finally if you want to check with your own patent offices regarding Blackboard applications the European application number is EP1192615 - though a search on the UK patent office merely throws up the EPO application.

I am not a legal expert - any clarifications would be very welcome.

Technorati Tags: blackboard, patents

Aha - we may have a fight on our hands.

Tim Schlotfeldt reports that SAP have applied to the European Patent Office for a patent including:

* CONTENT BASED MESSAGING FOR E-LEARNING
* STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS FOR A COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING SYSTEM
* E-LEARNING STATION AND INTERFACE
* NAVIGATING E-LEARNING COURSE MATERIALS
* E-LEARNING COURSE EDITOR
* E-LEARNING AUTHORING TOOL
* OFFLINE E-LEARNING
* E-LEARNING SYSTEM
* E-LEARNING COURSE STRUCTURE
* E-LEARNING STRATEGIES
* CONTENT BASED MESSAGING FOR E-LEARNING
* STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS FOR A COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING SYSTEM

Dirk Stieglitz has been burrowing away on the horrible EPO website and has come up with a list of SAP e-learning patent applications.

Can someone pass this on to Blackboard. Let the bastards slog it out in court I say. And the rest of us can get on with our work. But seriously, how many more of these applications exist?

And, one more worrying thing. The German government, which holds the rotating EU presidency for the first half of 2007, has announced a priority to strengthen Intellectual Property Rights.

Technorati Tags: blackboard, patents

Blackboard becomes USA Technologies' reseller to expand distribution of e-Suds : CR80 News:

OK, we know by now that Blackboard is a ruthless, money grabbing, nasty capitalist company that is more focused on revenues than learning.

But this seems a curious sideline

"Blackboard becomes USA Technologies' reseller to expand distribution of e-Suds
Wednesday, May 24 2006

Campus card solutions provider Blackboard is getting into the laundry business. It has added the eSuds online laundry service to its product line, giving USA Technologies access to hundreds of Blackboard's colleges and universities.

High Tech Laundry and Leading-edge Payment System Combine to Improve Laundry Experience

MALVERN, Pa--Blackboard Inc., the nation's leading provider of software and services to the education industry, has become a reseller of USA Technologies' e-Suds online laundry service.

USA Technologies announced that Blackboard had added e-Suds to its product line and would offer it to hundreds of academic institutions that use the Blackboard Transaction System.

e-Suds is the leading Internet connected laundry system that was recently featured on Fox National News for its innovativeness."

I think it is time to return e-learning to the education sector - not a company which washes its dirty washing in public.

Technorati Tags: blackboard

I am hard at work editing a book on e-learning in SMEs. The book is based on a wealth of empirical research. The research shows it is hard to generalise - attitudes to e-learning vary greatly between SMEs in different sectors and with different forms of work organisation.

One surprising finding - which seems to run across countries, sectors and organisations, is a fear that e-learning results in social isolation. I wonder how grounded such a perception is in reality. I also wonder if it is based on fear of lack of teacher support, or fear of lack of peer group interaction.

I am always wary of reading to much into such findings. But so common is this finding that it has to be taken seriously. And is it yet more evidence that the LMS / VLE model of e-learningis inappropriate - at least for adults and work based learning.

Social networking and e-portfolio type applications such as ELGG may be far more suitable for these learners. But, of course, the perception that the use of ICT for learning will leave learners socially isolated still has to be overcome.

Technorati Tags: e-learning, e-portfolios, Small and Medium Enterprises

i am still editing the book on e-learning in Small and Medium Enterprises.

The central contradiction our research has revealed is that whilst there are few examples of formal e-learning in small enterprises, computers are widely used for informal learning.

I found the following passage (which I suspect I may have written myself) interesting:

"Perhaps the most important question is the relationship between education and training systems and informal learning. There is currently much attention paid to informal learning at a policy level. If informal learning could be systematised, it could be a cost effective route to increasing training. However in order to do this it is felt necessary to be able to measure the learning taken place - in other words to formalise that learning. As such the concern is to develop an exchange value to learning which at present is seen only as having use value. That is not to say that exchange values are only in the interests of employers and policy makers. In an insecure labour market, exchange values are important for workers. However present proposals and mechanisms to establishing exchange value are based on identifying equivalents within frameworks linking informal learning to formally acquired qualifications and therefore seem more likely to constrain rather than support the use and status of informal learning. A better approach might be to recognise the use value of informal learning through profiling learning in non-constrained (e)-portfolios. Such an approach would provide a major move to learner driven learning where all learning is valid rather than only recognising that learning supported by qualification frameworks. "

Technorati Tags: communities of practice, e-learning, informal learning

I got an email form Jacqueline Hall earlier this week.

"Dear Graham", she said, "I am currently undertaking a piece of research examining the supply and demand side of competency (frameworks, mapping, assessment services and associated technology platforms.)

"It struck me that you mentioned this German word 'beruf ' at the Steering group, which was more a synthesis between knowledge and skills, rather than the UK perspective, where we make a clear division, evidenced within for example our NVQ frameworks and other vocational qualifications. I am aiming to try to provide a definition of competency and how it might be interpreted differently across countries such as France, Netherlands, Ireland, UK, Germany, Scandinavia and wonder if you have any links/information/papers which might make useful reading and attempt to provide some clarity. My colleague in the US is attempting to do the same for the States but are further behind us in terms of using competency frameworks or aligning them to business strategy."

What a good question. And there has been very limited work in this area. It would seem that the European Commission, in their obsession with producing common qualification frameworks, have, like national research organisations, failed to consider the different cultural ways in which we view skills and qualification.

there has been some limited work on the subject. I wrote a paper a few years ago on the cultural meaning of VET. I think it was published by the Portuguese curriculum research organisation but has no doubt long time subsided into obscurity. Over the week-end I will try to produce a couple of excerpts for this blog.

My great friend Pekka Kamarienen has produced some excellent work on the subject which was published in a book entitled "Transformation of learning in education and training Key qualifications revisited", which, along with Pekka and Alan Brown, I edited. Whilst this still appears to be available for purchase (25 Euros) from Cedefop.

Sadly Cedefop have not chosen to make the book available for download. I have a copy on my computer of course and if you would like to read any of it (you can find a list of the contents here) email me and I will send you the chapters as a file attachment (hope that doesn't upset Cedefop too much - knowledge being freely available- whatever next?).

By coincidence, Pekka pointed me today to a new wiki launched by the Institut Technik und Bildung at the University of Bremen.

The aim of the wiki is " to create a support-space for intercultural understanding of terms and concepts of technical and vocational education and training (TVET)."

The main page goes on to say: "In international co-operation - when using different languages - it is often hard to communicate concepts, which are specific to certain countries. Those concepts were developed using the individual country's language, and the development also affected the language by either creating new terms or assigning new meanings to existing terms. Thus it is usually hard to find equivalent terms in a language, which was not the native language of the concept.

This wiki intends to develop translations of such terms of TVET. In order to tackle the problem of environment- and development-related meanings of terms complex cross-cultural and inter-lingual webs will have to be created, comprising explanations of and references to the backgrounds and their processes that led to the existance of the terms.

Everybody with knowledge on TVET is invited to contribute to the development of this encyclopaedia of TVET terms. "

Sadly the front page appears to be locked at the moment but I am hopeful such teething problems are sorted out soon. Looks a good initiative and at least it is in the public domain. I

Technorati Tags: education and training research, knowledge development

Last week I wrote about workers being unwilling to participate in e-learning because of the perception that computer based learning is socially isolating.

I had a very interesting reply from Thomas Ryberg which warrants further thought.

Thomas says: first of all I think it is important to mention that the term e-learning is a bit too generic for such a conclusion to be made (which you also seem to be aware of :-). My position would be that it is not the e- as such that creates social isolation, but rather the pedagogical approach of the e-learning course. Do you have any data that can shed light on such relations, because that would be interesting? A Danish survey of SME learning concluded that most of the courses were very individually oriented - download material, answer a quiz. If that is the pedagogy of most of the courses, then certainly I think the feeling of social isolation would appear. But I guess the same goes for f2f learning. Many students at Danish Universities report that they feel socially isolated and it is a reason for quite a few to abandon their studies. This is, I guess, due to the pedagogical approach - come to a lecture with 100 strangers and then go do your reports alone. A second thing is that a discourse on 'internet as socially isolating' is strong among parents and the 40+ plus generation. They are in general afraid that their kids will become socially isolated (which is because they often don't know much about what their kids do - basically they use their computers to communicate with all of their friends :-). But I guess the discourse on computers, internet and social isolation goes back a while...what I was not quite sure about in your post was actually whether people reported actually being socially isolated after having participated in an actual course; or whether it was sort of something holding people back from joining a course - due to fear of becoming socially isolated?"

Well, lets clear up the last point first. It was a perception, rather than an experienced reality, that e-learning would be socially isolating. But in reality I think they are probably right. Learning is a social activity. basically, mots e-learing has replicated the cognitive processes of the classroom, whilst paying little or no attention to the social processes. What is interesting from our research is we found many workers using ICT for informal learning - using web sites, forums, chat functions etc. No-one complained that this was socially isolating. But of source they did not, themselves, perceive this as learning. Neither did their managers.

So it is partly to do with the perceptions of e-learning and partly to do with the pedagogy. The use of social software and the promotion of informal e-learning can overcome both perceptions and the reality of isolation.

Has anyone else a view on this?

Technorati Tags: e-learning, social software

I am in Salzburg for the kick off meeting of the European funded MOSEP project. Unusual timing for a meeting but as you can seed the weather and scenario are beautiful.

I am pretty excited about MOSEP - it is a project researching and piloting the sue of e-Portfolios in vocational education and training. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time and am sure we are going to have a lot of fun.

better still, tonight I have been invited to make a presentation on e-Portfolios in a traditional Austrian Beer House - wonderful.

For those who come to the show and for anyone else interested This post has attached my slides and a short paper. The presentation is based on one I did for the European Portfolio conference in cambridge last year - but with some development and movement on. I will make series of posts in the next few days with some new thoughts on e-Portfolio. I am particularly intrigued by how Portfolios can contribute to knowledge development. The diagramme below was originally thought up by Jenny Hughes a good few years ago - but I think deserves some new attention.

What is so exciting about this. For some time I have been puzzling how informal learning results in the development of a personal knowledge base. I think this diagramme begins to explain that process. In converting data and information to knowledge, both self reflection and feedback from teachers, peers and more generally form the community of practice play critical roles.

As ever, feedback will be welcome. Will try to provide an audio file of my talk at the weekend.

Salzburgaug06.ppt

Presentation slides

Paper

Technorati Tags: e-portfolios, PLEs

Sometime in the spring - can't remember quite when or who said it - there was a flurry of pots as to whether Personal Learning environments were the new e-Portfolio. The discussion has too slants. One strand questioned whether there was any real difference between e-Portfolios and PLEs. The second worried about the hype over PLEs and pointed to lack of evidence that the previous upsurge of interest in e-Portfolios had resulted in much real change.

Over the last few weeks I've been noticing a resurgence of interest in e-Portfolios. OK, maybe I'm being a little subjective. Last week I was at the launch of a new European project - site still under construction - on e-Portfolios, tomorrow I am traveling to Austria for a workshop on ELGG. But I think it goes beyond projects and workshops. The real driver of the recent discussions is simply the fast approaching new school and college term. e-Portfolios are moving beyond the first adopters, beyond the pedagogic researchers into mainstream use.

Coming back to the first question regarding the difference between e-Portfolios and PLEs, I am not sure of the answer. I don't think my idea of an effective e-Portfolio is much different form my take on a PLE. But not everyone in the learning technology community shares my views (probably a good job). What we all seem to have agreed on at the e-Portfolios meet up in Manchester in June was that we needed more grounded and small scale experiments in how we might configure and develop PLEs. (for discussion on ideas from Manhester workshop see PLE wiki pages maintained by Marc van Harmelen). We did not need yet another monolithic system called a PLE ( and anyway some ***tards would only try to patent it).

The good news about e-Portfolios coming of age - if my suspicion is right - is it will provide us with a rich landscape to experiment and develop new pedagogic approaches to learning.

Technorati Tags: Peronal Learning Environments, social software

Creativity seems to be rearing its head in one way or another lately.

First a bit of practical creativity. I made a presentation on e-Portfolios in a Beer Keller in Salzburg. OK - so the beer keeler wasn't so well adapted for teaching and learning. But upside down beer crates do a fine job as a stand for the data projector.

I raised the ability to create as a key facet of digital competence for developing e-Portfolios. I was challenged by a person - whose name I did not get - who asked what role creativity plays in e-Portfolios. Now I can see the role of creativity with the full use of multi media for [presentations - but am not sure how creativity is manifested in the more humdrum everyday activities of recording and reflection. I think the question warrants further thought.

Anyway, I had forgotten all about this until yesterday - traveling home after another five days on the road and reading John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Steinbeck says: "our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Noething was ever created by two men. there are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, thre group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything."

Ignoring Steinbeck's use of the word man to describe men and women - his point is interesting.

Technorati Tags: creativity

Had an email from Sally Reynolds on the subject on Online Educa Berlin.

Sally says: " Hi Graham, I hope you are keeping well and enjoying the summer. Graham I have a question for you, I know you are interested in the subject of informal learning and we are having a plenary on the subject at OEB this year, we are actively looking for companies and organisations really adopting a strategy to incorporate informal learning in a meaningful way and trying to find good speaker reps who could make a strong contribution to our agenda on the subject - any suggestions?"

Anyone any ideas?

Technorati Tags: informal learning, informal_learning

Last week, I went to Klagenfurt University to speak at a workshop organised by Wolfgang Greller.

Dave and Ben in action. Photo: Elmo De Angelis

The workshop was entitled 'ELGG - Social e-Portfolio Landscape for Reflecting and Presenting Learning'. I was the warm up speaker, talking about the use of social software for learning. Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller from ELGG did the hands on stuff.

It being August, I was pretty doubtful how many would sign up, but we had more than 30 (enthusiastic) participants, from four countries.

We specifically agreed we would show how the ELGG-Moodle integration worked. Now, if anyone has been following the history of this integration through a development block from New Zealand, you will know it is non trivial. Early releases of the plug-in for Moodle appear to have been buggy.

Anyway, Rene Samselnig from the University of Klagenfurt had done a wonderful job in configuring (or hacking) the plug in.

Dave led a walk through session, showing how form a single log-in, users could move assignments undertaken through the course structure in Moodle to their ELGG personal learning portfolio and went on to show the pedagogic use of ELGG ind developing personal portfolios.

I was impressed. For me, this bridges the gap between present VLE oriented practice and the Personal Learning Environments we have been talking about. And this is not proof of concept, this is rich, working software. There is also a further release of ELGG due in the next ten days or so, with many enhancements. It seems this will feature federated search across any ELGG install configured to allow such access. And a presentation module is planned for this autumn. ELGG is getting to be powerful stuff.

I have worked for the last two years with the JISC e-learning programme. In general, I think JISC have made the right call in backing the development of a Service Oriented Environment and in developing 'reference Models' for standards between the different building blocks of an e-learning, e-adminsitartion and e-researcch environment. But progress is painfully slow. Open Source providers are making much quicker progress through providing working solutions, utilizing Open APIs and de facto standards to allow the development and repurposing and reuse of contents.

The University of Klagenfurt are producing a video of the workshop. We will write it up and present the workshop on ELGG and on the Bazaar site. And if anyone is interested in a similar, hands on, practical workshop please get in touch.

Meanwhile, there are many people who should be thanked, too many to mention. But I have to say what a wonderful job Wolfgang did in organizing the event. he has only been in post in Klagenfurt since last autumn, but there is a real buzz around the place. Long may it continue.

Technorati Tags: e-portfolios, Peronal Learning Environments, Personal_Learning_Environments