The Wales-Wide Web

I think this is rather good. Although it is entitled " Implementation guidelines for Communities Of Practice within the hospitality sector", it has much wider applicability and interest. It has been produced by Marcel van Holstein from the Horeca Branche Instituut in the Netherlands as part of the European Work and Learning Together project. I am evaluator of the project but to my shame did not know about the wiki until I interviewed Marcel by telephone this afternoon. Below I list Marcel's critical success factors But do look at the rest of the wiki.

I certainly concur when he says:

"Setting up a virtual COP takes time. This is especially the case when the virtual COP is not added as a tool to an already functioning COP. In that case building trust and commitment and letting the identity of the COP emerge is a gradual time consuming process."

Marcel would very much like feedback so please so send him your comments.

"Critical success factors for the implementation of communities of practice

The success of a community of practice depends, to a large extent, on participants of the community, because of the voluntary participation, self determination and practical relevance for the individual or organization. These aspects can be cultivated best, when the following critical success factors are taken into account:

1. It is important not to apply very specific and narrow criteria with respect to what constitutes a COP and to when a COP is successful. Communities are intrinsically hard to define, because they are not by nature clearly bounded.

2. Participants of a community of practice have to experience the relevance and perceive the goal(s) of the community as useful. They will have to be able to identify themselves with it, to become “owner” of the community and enthusiastic about it.

3. Participants of community of practice have to be convinced of the fact that continuously improving and learning (new) competences leads to an improvement of job performance.

4. To realize this within the community there needs to be commitment and mutual trust. Participants have to experience their participation is valued by other participants. In most cases because of the knowledge they bring to the community but also because of their way of working and communicating.

5. The initiator of a COP will have to be prepared to give a considerable freedom to the participants.

6. Participants need to have well developed social skills. Working together within and outside the community will lead faster to new knowledge, insight and solutions compared to trying to solve problems alone.

7. Especially in the start up phase, a lot of attention will have to be paid to community building by community participants themselves.

8. Conflicts have to be dealt with in a timely and respectful manner. The solution of a conflict is not seen as a victory or loss or individual participants but rather as a learning opportunity for the community as a whole.

9. Dialogue has to take place. Conclusions have to be drawn in a collaborative way. Opinions of all participants should be respected. Conclusions should not be imposed by the moderator.

10. Participants should experience the community as a safe environment in which they can express their opinions and positions without fear, feel free to ask questions and free to explore non-conformist solutions and creative ideas.

11. Participants experience commitment and support from the management of the organization (if applicable)

12. Participants experience their participation as contributing to their personal growth. Bottom line is that participants experience that, based on the gained knowledge, their performance on the job in the hotel, restaurant, guesthouse, etc. where they work has increased.

13. Participants experience the added value of the fact that the community is of a multidisciplinary nature and consists of participants from different hierarchical layers of the organization.

14. Because the COP works to a large extent virtually, the community will need to be supported by a well-functioning collaborative working tool, which allows extending the range of functionalities as a community becomes more developed.

15. The management of the organization (if applicable) has to understand and actively support the strategic importance of the COP but should not be directly involved in its daily operation or setting the goals of the COP. The management has to accept and trust the community as a “self-steering" unit."

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I'm mot sure whether this is true. But it is a great story in the dead news space of August when it is even hard to find much to say about educational technology. From the International Herald Tribune

"Germany's national railway wasn't about to risk sending a trainload of soccer fans to a German Cup match without beer.

Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey.

"In order not to endanger the good mood" of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans."

There's an interesting (sort of) and confusing discussion going on on one of the Becta mailing lists.

Ray Tolley asked of anyone could tell him the total spend On ICT in education in the UK.

The most useful of the responses, he says, "came from Richard Selwyn, Project Manager, Becta ... which, when adding all the separate figures together points up a total spend this next year of £860m for 2007-2008. As a proportion of the
£34bn total education budget reported in the Guardian that makes a 2.53% spend on ICT. This compares with the US in 1998 when the figure was identified by Anderson and Becker as 2.7% ..".

It has been suggested in later posts that the Becta figures may only be spend in england and so for the UK as a whole the percentage would be higher.

My question is what does it mean? How important is the total (and percentage) invested in ICT? Of course computers are useful for computer supported learning. But investment in professional development for teachers may pay a higher dividend for learning than investment in more machines.

I had an interesting exchange of emails this morning with Ben Scoble from Staffordshire University.

Ben had picked up on my list of different skills / competencies for reflection

• Forming an opinion
• Expressing an opinion
• Articulating an opinion
• Justifying an opinion
• Defending an opinion
• Supporting the opinions of others
• Challenging others opinions
• Questioning others opinions
• Seeking clarification of others opinions
• Representing other opinions
• Building on others opinions
• Sorting fact from fiction

Ben says: "Reflection is a particular concern - as it often plays a crucial role in eLearning and developing higher level (deeper) learning - is this an inherent 'feminine' skill [or a skill that is easier to hone]?"

He goes on to ask: "So would the lack of knowledge of and/or the inclusion of a framework for engaging in reflection activities - adversely affect male students engaging in eLearning?"

I'm not sure of the answer to this - but suspect that gender does make a difference. But of course it is not just gender. Many individuals do not take easily to reflection (my daughter would be a prime example!). Given the importance of reflection in learning (or at least I think it is) then the inclusion of a framework for reflection would benefit those learners who may be at a disadvantage in this form of learning.

Yesterday I was in Leicester for a training day for the launch of our new e-Portfolio system - Freefolio (lots more about that soon - it is fabulous).

In the morning we ran a hands on session for the e-Portfolio and in the afternoon I ran a workshop on reflection. It was a bit like being hoist with my own petard. For some time I have been berating e-Portfolio 'experts' who say how important reflection is in the e-Portfoliod development process - but then have nothing more to say on the subject. I was a little nervous about 'teaching' refection. But the workshop was a lot of fun and the participants seemed to enjoy it - and said, at least, they found it useful.

Now I would like to take this forward in tow ways:

a) To develop the framework Ben talks about
b) To develop on line tools / activities to develop competences in reflection.

The only problem is I need some funding - anyone any ideas?

This blog post from George Roberts fascinates me. I think we need to explore the relations and contradictions George raises far more carefully than we have to now.

"Oliver and Trigwell (2005) raise the Freirian question: education as the practice of freedom. The overt curriculum of the industrial era, the "3 Rs" was reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic. The covert curriculum, inculcated by early modern schooling was punctuality, tolerance of repetition and subordination: compliance with which was important for the functioning of capital intensive industry. Overt curricula are presented as being beneficial for all. Covert curricula benefit particular positions: dominant elites or their powerful oppositional forces. From this perspective the key affordances of e- learning, flexibility, community and individualisation are problematic. Against flexibility might be set a return to piecework and insecurity. Against community and team working might be set normalisation and a re-expression of hierarchies. And, against individualisation or personalisation might be set an increased tolerance to surveillance and a willingness to surrender personal information to anonymous, autonomous agents offering only predatory reciprocity. (Roberts 2004)."

In the last four years the longest I have been off line is three days. And boy, that seemed strange. Now in the interests of science I am going off line for nine days. Yes - you read that right - no internet, no emails, no web, no skype for ten days.

In order to cope with the inevitable withdrawal effects, I will be investing in a quantity of red wine to overcome sensory deprivation.

I did think about turning the mobile off to but that seemed a step to far. Be back on line Monday 20th.

Back from holiday (I didn't look at a computer for a week!) and back to the blog. And what better start to the autumn season than this new report from the US National School Boards Association — a not-for-profit organization representing 95,000 school board members.

The study, funded by Microsoft, News Corporation, and Verizon, found the internet isn't as dangerous as people think, and teachers should let students use social networks at school.

Tech. Blorge.com say the report warns that many fears about the internet are just overblown. "School district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report," the study reports. For example, more than half the districts think sharing personal information has been "a significant problem" in their schools — "yet only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names or other personal information to strangers."

This chimes with my long held belief that in a risk adverse society educational institutions spend far more time worrying about potential dangers and 'what if' scenarios than they do in helping students learn how to use the internet safely and creatively.

The UK telecommunication regulatory body, Ofcom, have just published their annual report.

It is a substantial body of work and I have to admit I haven't read it myself - relying rather on press and radio reports.

There seems to be much of interest in the report. For the first time women webusers have taken the lead in key age groups. At the same time an army of silver surfers has emerged and the over 65s are spending more hours online than any other age group, according to the Guardian.

Predicably young peopel are psending more time on line, with growing use of social networking istes. thsi time spent appears to be at teh expense of watching television.

Much of the BBC radio coverage was taken to the emergence of older people at heavier internet users than youth. Commentators speculated that this was due to the rise of internet commerce and to women using the web for social networking.

However, the preponderance of older users bares out the survey we carried out of the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. We found older workers far more likely to use the web for learning than younger employees (albeit for informal learning rather than pursuing formal e-Learning courses). We speculated at the time this might be due to wider web access for more senior employees.

However, we felt, although could not proof, that older workers felt more at home using the internet for informal learning. Tomorrow I will have a look at the Ofcom report to see if it has anything to say about learning. But it remains my feeling that educational technologists have over-focused on developing learning applications and content for younger students and have failed to see the potential for extending and supporting lifelong learning and continuing professional development through the internet.

The term social networking also covers a multitude of activities. the radio reports tended to assume social networking as a leisure time activity - a replacement or chatting on the phone. Women do more of this than men, the reasoning went. I am unsure of this is true. But I would certainly suggest that much of the so called social networking is actually the use of social software for informal learning.

I am underwelmed by mots of the Facebook plug-ins (although overwhelmed by the number available. And I totally fail to understand the attraction of applications like Zombies

But the one application which I think is really useful - as opposed to decorative - is my questions. I have tried asking questions a few times on my blog - and have got a reasonable response - but the blog display is in no way as useful as the plug-in for this sort of discourse. My questions is really handy for quickly gathering different people's views on key issues.

And - 9f you do have a Facebook account - my question is "How can we support informal earning?". For those of you without an account I will publish the relies on this blog some time in the future.

Interesting article in the Guardian about a new guide by the UK Trade Union Congress on using social networks in work.

The guide points out that employers can legally ban the use of social networks and take action against employees who break such a ban. It also says that employers are entitled to consider social networking content if an employee has applied for promotion.

The General Secretary of the TUC appeals to employers to be reasonable pointing out employees should be able to have a life outside work. The guide goes on to give some sensible advice on the use of social networkls.

But it is this paragraph that I find most interesting:

"Work is a major part of our lives, and staff have always discussed aspects of their jobs in private. Now that online social networking is becoming mainstream, many of these private conversations are searchable by the public."

The use of social networking is redefining conventions around private and public discourses. Many of these conventions are implicit and tacit and of course are heavily culturally defined. In Germany people are much more 'private' than in Wales where we quite freely share information about our personal lives - and gossip happily about friends and acquaintances - with relative strangers.

It may well be that to move forward the debate we need to take what has previously been tacit and implicit and transform to explicit knowledge. Handbooks like the TUCs are part of this process.

Postscript: Just a short moan. News web sites like the Guardian are getting very lax about citations. Whereas once they always linked to original source material now they next to never do. I spent a good few minutes searching for the handbook. If news organisations are going to quote extensively form such a source I think they must provide a direct link. End of moan/

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