The Wales-Wide Web

I found it hard to believe this email which arrived this afternoon. I've always rated Innovate as one of the best of the on line educational technology mags. And I've got no problems with seeking sponsorship (anyone want to sponsor Sounds of the Bazaar?). But some sort of independence is critical. And inviting the submission of "manuscripts describing uses of Microsoft technology (e.g., Office, SharePoint, WL@EDU) that enhance, extend, or in some cases replace traditional pedagogical or research methods" is just ...I am lost for words.

Just so you know I am not making this up see text below from editor James Morrison:

"We are delighted to announce that Microsoft is the first charter sponsor of Innovate under a new program designed to build alliances with corporate participants in the educational technology community. The sponsorship program will widen Innovate’s scope while ensuring that Innovate will continue to be available as an open access e-journal......

The sponsorship program affords technology providers the opportunity to partner with Innovate to help spread the word about creative new uses of technology that will enhance educational effectiveness. In concert with this effort, we are offering sponsors a voice on our Web site via a new section, "From Our Sponsors." As described in the "About this Journal" link, we will publish articles in this section that focus on (1) how educators use our sponsors’ products to enhance teaching, learning, and administration, (2) the services our sponsors have provided or intend to provide to enhance educational effectiveness, and (3) how our sponsors view the future of education and the role information technology tools will play in addressing educational problems and issues. These articles will
meet Innovates high editorial standards; they will be rigorously reviewed and edited to enhance their value to the global community.

As part of the sponsorship arrangement with Microsoft, we invite you to submit manuscripts describing uses of Microsoft technology (e.g., Office, SharePoint, WL@EDU) that enhance, extend, or in some cases replace traditional pedagogical or research methods. Interested authors should contact me with a brief description of the proposed article and an approximate date of submission. "

Oh my - whatever next - project placement, dog-food adverts?

Technorati Tags: corporate sponsorship

Welcome to the first of the autumn series of Sounds of the Bazaar. We are proud to announce we have teamed up with Online Educa Berlin to bring you this series. In each of the coming issues we will featuring some of the speakers at forthcoming Educa Online Berlin Conference plus our usual mixture of news and features from the educational technology, open source and open content communities. And we will be podcasting live from the conference. But more on that next month.

We’ve got some pretty heavyweight guests lined up for future programmes including Ewan McIntosh, Dave Wiley and Jay Cross. We are also launching a new series - the Bazaar Unplugged - designed to provide space for newbies to the podcasting scene. If you are teaching podcasting or using podcasting in your courses please do get in touch - Bazaar Unplugged is designed as a showcase for learners be they young or old. The first edition of the new series - due out in the next ten days - is being made by Pontydysgu intern, Adrian Puscuta, about computer games, identities learning and more.

But back to this weeks show. After the summer break, we had a lot of materials in the can so we have produced you a double issue. More than an hours listening.

In the first of the Online Educa special editions, Stephen Downes talks about changing ways in which we are using the internet for learning. Vijay Kumar from MIT and Toru Iiyoshi from the Carnegie Foundation discuss how the development of Open Education can improve quality. And Seb Schmoller explains the background to the Association for Learning Technology’s accredited member scheme. And Web site of the month features the UK Jisc Emerge community. Plus, I talk about future plans for Sounds of the Bazaar. And there is our usual musical interludes with a series of new jingles.

Of course one hour may be a bit too long for one session’s listening (although we find it goes well with watching football with the sound turned down). So you can access each episode separately. And next week there will be an enhanced version available from the iTunes store (see this site for more details).

The full version features music by Stepping Back, a blues-rock band from France. The featured tracks are from their album “Stepping Back“.
And like in the last volume you find this album and a lot more music published under Creative Commons licences on the great music site Jamendo.com.
Enjoy!

Listen Now:

•  Listen to the full edition of Sounds of the Bazaar [71:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (20)
•  Introduction to the programme [4:19m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (11)
•  Open Education - interview with Vijay Kumar from MIT and Toru Iiyoshi from the Carnegie Foundation [20:08m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (10)
•  Future plans for Sounds of the Bazaar - Graham Attwell [3:05m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (12)
•  A talk with Stephen Downes [17:16m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (24)
•  Seb Schmoller on the Association for Learning Technology Accredited Member Scheme [12:04m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (11)
•  Web site of the month featuring the UK Jisc Emerge community [7:37m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8)
•  Extro to this programme - Graham Attwell: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (10)

I ma in Vilnius for a meeting of the Fe-ConF project - Framework for elearning Contents Evalauation.

Despite the name it is a good project - a lot of thoughtful contributions.

I particularly liked the contribution from Minna Lakkala from the University of Helsinki who talked about the pedagogical design of technology enhanced collective e-learning. She referred to the sociolodical and epistomological infratstructures necessary for content sharing.

And - by serendipity - whilst listening to Minna a couple of emails arrived on the Becta list talking about cultures of sharing.

The first was from John Potter who said: "In a strand recently about web 2.0 it became apparent that in a culture where league tables are no longer published there are greater opportunities for sharing and innovation. Ewan McIntosh and the experience in Scotland seems to bear this out. Having schools in competition publicly in this way seems to inhibit all sorts of potentially useful collaboration and innovation. Tricia's story seems to bear this out. Perhaps this and other pressures on teachers within the system really do make it difficult to share and to innovate and to examine what it means to be a teacher or a learner in 2007. "

Nick Morgan suggested the additional factors regarding a willingness of share learning materials in Scotland:

"Professional shyness - many teachers arent confident enough of the quality of the resources they produce, and are happy to use their produce but reluctant to share it publically and thereby invite critical comment.
 
Earning - A minority of teachers are at the other end of the spectrum, so confident about their own product that they won't share it without payment being involved.
 
Copyright - uncertainty about who owns the rights on the resources, or an instruction from their authority employers not to distribute. A common view: If a resource is produced on local authority equipment and in employers time, 'it' belongs to the authority and some authorities don't see why they should let anyone else use those resources for free."

Technorati Tags: Open content

I am on the road for much of the next two weeks.

Sunday, I go to Lisbon where I am taking part in a panel discussion at the e-Learning Lisboa Conference. And Tuesday evening I move on to Barcelona where I am speaking at the UOC UNESCO Chair in eLearning IV International Seminar being organised by the Open University of Catalonia.

Early Friday morning I travel back up north to the European e-Portfolio conference at Maastricht where - together with Serge Revet - I am organising a workshop on Personal and Organisational Learning Environments.

Then a couple of days break. On October 24th and 25th I will be speaking at a meeting on 'Trainers in Europe' in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Will try and make as much of the papers, slides and the rest available here. In truth its not all new - quite a bit of stuff will be remixed - though with some new takes I hope. So for each event i will try to put up a post providing links to different resources about the presentation - if only for those new to this blog.

In the meantime, if any of you are attending any of these events and would like to meet up for a beer, just drop me a line.

On 2 December 2003 I wrote "Blogs should have a significant starting point. Mike Malloch from Knownet set me up this blog over a week ago. And I have spent a week trying to think of something significant to start with. What could be better than Werder Bremen going into the winter break top of the Bundesliga."

Some 560 blog posts on Werder Bremen are alas only in second place in the Bundesliga. But we beat Lazio Roma in the Champions League on Wednesday. And that, I think, is significant event enough for launching the Wales Wide Web at its new home on the Pontydysgu web site.

Why the move? When I started the blog I was working part time for Knownet. However soem two years later we parted tracks. I wanted to refocus my work on the pedagogic application of new technologies. I left the blog on the Knownet site. And indeed Mike and the others from the Knownet crew have been good to me over the years, sorting out the occasional bug and fixinfg the site when I have pasted goobledygook code into my posts. A big thanks to them all.

But the time has come to move on. Pontydysgu - for whom I now work full time - have a new and exciting web site. And moving over to the new site will allow me more room to experiment with the design and functionality of the blog. Plus, over the last six months, I have become increasingly fond of Wordpress. I will be adding the 560 or so back posts from this site to the new Wales Wide Web home.. But it may take a couple of weeks. So please be patient. And next week I promise you a positive flurry of goodies.

If you have a blogroll link to the Wales Wide Web please change this to www.pontydysgu.org/blogs/waleswideweb

Look forward to talking to you.