The Wales-Wide Web

Ok - here is a question for those of you who are geographically challenged.Where is Villach. Well its in Carinthia of course. And Carinthia is In the eastern corner of Austria - near to Italy and Slovenia.

And Villach is the host to the annual conference on Interactive Computer Aided Learning.

Sandra Schaffert from Salzburg Research invited me to take part in a special session on Open Educational Resources and Practices. There were three other presenters, Victoria Hornung, also from Salzburg Institute who presented the excellent OLCOS project, Marcus Deimann from the FernUniveristat in Hagen, Germany presented a paper on integrating Open Educational Resources and Instructional Design and Marco Kalz from the Open University of the Netherlands gave a presentation on recommender systems for finding Open Resources. And I presented a paper by Raymond Elferink and myself on developing an Architecture of Participation.

We had planned a skype conference call to prepare the session but didn't get our act together. But despite this it worked well. the papers complimented each other. They all had something to say. that is not to say we all agreed. I am extremely dubious of the instructional design approach,. But as George Roberts says, one feature of communities of practice is homogeneous difference. I think that the session reflects the emergence of a community of practice around Open Educational Resources.

Anyway, if you want to find out more, here is a bumper package. The paper (click the link below). The presentation (click on the slide above). And a hastily edited audio of my talk.

Developing an Architecture of Participation

>Listen Now:

 Developing an Architecture of Participation - the talk [19:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Entry Filed under: General

Technorati Tags: Open content, Open source, OSS, oss_education

I/ve written before about the Reflective Evaluation project. It is a two year European Commission funded project, now drawing to a close, which aimed to produce ICT based resources for facilitating self evaluation activities by teachers. Pretty challenging, huh?

At the outset the project coordinators had the idea that this could be done with a tool developed in Powerpoint. The rest of the partners were not so sure. For many of us Powerpoint had little appeal, in terms of its scriptability and attactivess for users. The coordinators, Ira and Gerald form the University of Flensburg, were fortunately flexible and open to new ideas.

Jen, Chris and myself designed a web 2.0 (ish) tool, allowing teachers and trainers to access and answer multimedia questions designed to stimulate reflection, to see and compare with the answers of others and to create their own tools.

OK, it doesn/t go as far as I would like but there are real challenges getting people for five different countries to share meanings and ideas, and pedagogic limitations in the European Commission demand that the questions should be available in each partner language.

But the best bit of the project has been the multimedia. Despite most partners being traditional academic researchers, with limited computer experience, by this weeks workshop all of them were working together, sharing in creating videos and other multi media artifacts. Its creative and great fun.

Want to have a look? Better still, want to create your own learning materials. All you have to do is go to www.refelctive-evaluation.eu and create yourself an account.

NB We are still editing the help videos so you will have to learn as you go. But if you would like more information please get in touch. And before you ask, of course it is Open Source.

I'm not short our ideas for blog posts at the moment. But I am short of time. And blogging takes time. But hopefully in the next few days I will have some opportunities to get some of these ideas off my chest. And I've still got notes form last weeks Alt C conference which I promised to write up.

For now you will have to content yourself with this picture from the Emerge island ins Second Life. the jukebox connects to the different podcasts I have been making as part of the Emerge project. (If you do visit the island the jukebox has now been moved to an exhibition centre in the star floating over the island(.

I love it. maybe it is flattery. But i am beginning to see the real potential of Multi User virtual environments such as Second Life, not for replicating classrooms on line, but for infomal discourse and learning.

More on this soon - I'm working on some ideas.

Technorati Tags: podcasts, SecondLife

In an hour I am off to the Alt C conference in Nottingham.

I am chairing a session on international Communities of Practice.

There is a bit of a strange history to this session. We originally submitted a proposal for a symposium,. However it was knocked back. We could, the programme committee said, have a short paper session - 20 minutes. Now the problem - how to fit three presentations into twenty minutes and still have time for discussion.

We decided each presenter should have a two minute video slot. So here are the results - surprisingly it seems to work - each makes a good point in only 2 minutes.

But first the overview - this is the blurb from the application (written by George Roberts).

"Communities exist on many scales and few communities can truly be called communities of practice (CoP) in the strict and elaborated sense as used by Lave and Wenger. Through purposeful engagement with CoPs people progress from a state of peripheral participation towards a state of mastery of the forms and norms
of the CoP (see: Dewey, 1933; Goodman, 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991;
Leont'ev, 1978; Wenger, 1998). This journey is sometimes mirrored by progression in formal education, but as often as not is supported by episodes of informal learning. This may take place in institutions, but more often occurs in the workplace, the home, the community centre and other spaces. At each stage the
learner needs to establish their co-ordinates through a process of establishing self-identity within a community.

The application of CoP theory in instrumental circumstances almost always presumes the pre-existence of groups who share community of practice attributes. Communities of practice are emergent organisations with tacit but clearly identifiable rules and other signs of identity: shared goals, shared values, shared symbolic artefacts. These may be codified but as often as not tacit community rules transgress or subvert codified, formal rules. We start from the position that although it now commonplace to recognise the existence of CoPs, the processes underpinning their development are still poorly understood. In particular, it has been found to be difficult in practice to create or facilitate the development of CoPs.

As a move towards better understanding of community formation, facilitation and development, this symposium will consider three emergent international educational communities of practice working both in and through Web2.0 environments."

And now to the videos.

First up is George Roberts whose presentation is entitled 'Emerging Oxymorons'

Second is Karsten Wolf who presents 'Communities of Practice in World of Warcraft'.

The third presentation is 'Communities of Practice and Identities' by Tore Hoel.

Hope you enjoy them.

Technorati Tags: communities of practice

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.

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.

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.

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)."

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 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."

Technorati Tags: communities of practice

Here we go with another release from the Pontydysgu studios.

This one is a bit of an oddity its a mash up - based on an idea by Brian Kelly. Brian has invited participants in the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies which may be of interest to IWMW 2007 participants.

This could include, the Innovation Competition web site says:

• 'Mashups' which integrate content from multiple sources
• Informative, educational or entertaining use of multimedia (e.g. podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.)
• Informative, educational or entertaining use of 3-D virtual environments such as Second Life.
• Seamless access to content using technologies such as OpenID.

We went for the video mash up and my colleague Einion Dafydd mashed together my speech on PLEs at AltC last year together with the Jisc video on services oriented architecture.

I'm not quite sure what we have achieved - or even what we hoped to achieve. But it was a lot of fun. Anyway here are the reviews (all two of them!).

Brian Kelly says: "Not all of the entries to the IWMW 2007 Innovation Competition consist of mashups of text and images from various sources. Graham Attwell, a member of the JISC Emerge project team, has created a mashup of two video clips (the JISC cartoon about the E-Framework and a talk given by Graham at the ALT-C 2006 conference) which allows users to see the argument for approaches to development of e-learning services from two different viewpoints - that of institutional management as epitomized by JISC and the learners viewpoint as explained by Graham Attwell. This, I feel, provides an interesting example of scholarly debate which makes use of YouTube."

And Steven Downes comments "Nice video contraposing an official-sounding description of the e-Framework, a set of protocols intended to standardize educational web services, and commentary from a talk by Graham Attwell. I especially like the way he was able to dig up the subtext from what would otherwise seem to be an innocuous technical video."

You've read the reviews - now enjoy the video.

Students' trial by Facebook | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk:

I haven't much time for rowdy, middle class, over-proveledged Oxford students. But I have even less time for the University internal police, archaically called proctors.

And now it looks as if the proctors are hacking Facebook to cause a bit of grief for the students.

But it is going to take some time before we sort out what can and should be shared through social networking sites and what rights of privacy - if any - we should be entitled too. And - I'm not paranoid, honestly - but if a few dozy Oxford proctors can hack their way through Facebook access controls, I sort of think that security services are not going to find it tricky. Are we all monitoring ourselves these days?

"Oxford University staff are logging on to Facebook and using evidence they find on student profiles to discipline students.

Photos on the social networking website of undergraduates celebrating the end of their exams have been emailed to students by the proctors, Oxford's disciplinary body, as evidence of breaches of the University's code of conduct.

Students now face fines of up to £100 after proctors collected evidence of students celebrating the end of exams by "trashing" their friends, covering them with champagne, confetti, flour, and even foodstuffs including raw meat and octopus."

Students may be unable to graduate until the disciplinary hearings are resolved.

I got offered a job blogging a few weeks ago.

It was a good offer - to contribute some 10-15 items a week to a blog about Open Educational resources. The items did not have to be long. And the pat was quite reasonable.

I thought long and hard - and finally rather reluctantly turned it down. Reluctant - because it seems a bit of a dream to be paid for doing something I enjoy writing about something which interests me.

But there seem two drawbacks. The first is that I find blogging on the road to be difficult. When I am involved in a run of intensive meetings and workshops I don't always have the headspace for blogging. And the second is that I am afraid it would destroy the fun of blogging. Along with others, I have always wondered how Stephen Downes keeps writing OL Daily, day in, day out. Sometimes I just don't want to blog - I don't feel I have anything to say. And at other times I have a lot to say. For me my blog is part of my everyday work and everyday life - and the blog has to fit in - not the other way round of me having to write the blog.

I am interested in these issues because of an emerging discourse in the Emerge community about the possibility of a project on using Web 2.0 and social software for supporting academic writing.

It is an interesting idea and an important one. Often, if I am working on an academic paper or a contribution to a book, I do not blog. The style of expression is just too different to quickly switch formats.

So, I suspect we may have to reconsider just what is academic writing. I have been involved in a number of projects trying to use Wikis for co-development and collective writing of research papers and training materials. It is not easy and requires a great deal of planning. I suspect this will be the way we work in the future - especially in the context of European projects involving collaboration between researchers in different countries. But we have a lot to learn about how to do it.

I'd be interested in anyone else's thoughts (and experiences) on this subject.

I was in Swindon a couple of weeks ago visiting my elderly parents. They took me off for a meal with one of their equally aged friends.

I went through the usual difficulties of trying to explain to her what I actually do for a living (not sure myself really).

And then she presented me with a fridge magnet (yes, that is not a type).

The fridge magnet is entitled 'Why Study?'

And the text runs:

'The more I study
The more I know

The more I know
The more I forget

The more I forget
The less I know

So why study?

Sums up how I feel about formal learning sometimes.

This is a longish paper - about 7000 words - too long to post all off it in the blog. So I am posting here an exrpt with access to an RTF download of the full paper (perhaps I will post another excerpt tomorrow.

Have chosen to post the section on reflection - just because this issue seems to give everyone trying to work with e-Portfolios so many problems.

One curiosity about the paper is the references. I didn't set out to do this but found in the course of reading for the paper that most of the interesting things I was reading were from blog posts. Is it juts the subject, is it me - or are things changing? Anyway the references include a couple of books, a good few conference papers, a video and a lot of blogs. And by the way - how do you reference someones comment on an Excite Comment Wall?

As always any feedback very welcome.

Facilitating Reflection

In projects and at conferences about e-portfolios, at some point the discussion seems always to turn to the issue of how to facilitate meaningful reflection.

Typical is the following blog entry by a teacher, John Pallister (2007a). 
“We have begun work trying to encourage our students, 11- 18 year olds, to reflect on their learning and achievements. We are also encouraging them to record their thoughts and reflections as part of the review/reflection process. The review stage is informing the Action Planning stage, which again we are trying to get students to record.
It seems to me to be a Logical process, having done something, to review what you have done then to revise your original plan or create a new plan.

Early attempts have focussed on printed materials providing students with a number of prompts/questions which focus students on the review process. We have experimented with text based and audio/video formats for recording reviews/reflections. Early stages, not managed to find much help in terms of approaches that help/encourage/support students to reflect and record their reflections - still looking??

Although I am sure that having done something, all students will informally think or form some personal evaluation of their performance, I suspect that the review/reflection is at a very superficial level, perhaps enjoyed it, not going to do that again, did not do that very well, too difficult etc. If students walk away only having reflected at this level they will not have made the most of the learning opportunity.

The challenge is to somehow encourage students to spend more time on this reflection stage, exploring more what they have done/achieved. I suspect that this would help them to design more useful plans and, by thinking about their learning, become that elusive better learner.”

The problem may be that to move beyond the superficial requires intrinsic motivation. As such it is not possible to ‘teach’ someone how to reflect. However, it is possible provide learners with the skills required for reflection and to practice those skills and equally to provide a stimulus to encourage reflection (Buchberger, 2007)

Buchberger goes on to say: “I have my doubts about the usefulness of written reflection following certain prompts or guiding questions. We have been ‘forcing’ our teacher trainees to hand in written reflections on their performance in class each semester, which hasn't proved very successful. It's turned out to make much more sense if trainees, their mentors and the teaching practice supervisor (what a terrible word !) meet after class and in a very relaxed atmosphere analyse the lessons as "critical friends" (with a strong focus on friend !!). This is what we do regularly and trainees find it much more helpful than their written reflection papers. Perhaps - from time to time - a few notes summarizing such a talk might be a reminder and starting point for further student reflection. But again it should make sense for the student, not just to satisfy the teacher/trainer.

Stephen Warbuton (2007) attended a presentation given by a group at the University of the Pacific on ‘Dialogical Reflection in the Digital Age’. "Like many educators", he says, "Jim Phillips and Erick Marmolejo, grappled with the nature of reflection – a term that often eludes definition. Their use of what they called ‘dialogic reflection’ was focussed around reflective activities based on a play between the academic vs. professional portfolios, the production of artefacts and samples accompanied by reflective statement with a summative assessment process slotted in right at the end. They identified general problems with the reflective process when situated within an educational context in that opinion-laden task lists do not get at the heart of the strength of reflection, feedback loops can be slow and not enough time is allocated to reflection which results in very little reflective speak (there is only play around reflective dialogue). As Kathleen Yancey points out in her book “Reflection in the writing classroom” - reflection is always a fiction where students write specifically to the needs of the tutor.

The key philosophy behind their methodology to reinvigorate the process of reflection lies in pushing tutors to unlearn traditional approaches to writing instruction paralleled with the use of reflection as a means to individualise instruction and personalise learning. “

Jenny Hughes has adopted a similar approach. In a video of a workshop she takes a group of adult learners through a process of providing constructive feedback to each other. Indeed, it is quite remarkable that adult teachers are not used to this process (Hughes, 2007). Her key point is that there are forms and structure and skills o providing feedback and in a similar way forms and structure to reflection. For learners these skills include:

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

Each of these processes can be structured and supported within the e-portfolio development process. However, they also require skills on the part of the teacher or facilitator. These might include:

•     Facilitator skills
•     Active listening skills
•     Feedback skills
•     Intervention skills
•     Evaluation skills

Yet the practising of such skills or competencies or the embedding of such practice within everyday learning activities has implications for both pedagogic approaches to teaching and learning and to curriculum design and organisation. Facilitating reflection is not simple within a largely ‘input based’ curriculum where the main goal is to pass a series of prescribed examinations. The danger is that reflection is simply seen as irrelevant to the qualification driven motivation of many students within their school based learning (as opposed to outside school). Case studies undertaken through the MOSEP project suggest that development of reflection through e-Portfolios may work best in project-based learning and when reflection is linked to activities. It is interesting that in the Kit Car project case study (Attwell and Brandsma, 2006), the project was developed as an extra curriculum project and was not subject to the normal confines of curriculum and assessment rules.

It may also be that reflection is constrained by the dominant written form of evidencing within e-Portfolios. The widespread use of multi media is a feature of many of the social networking sites referred to earlier. Yet despite some attempts to encourage more use of multi media, most e-Portfolios remain text based, probably once more due to the demands of assessment policies. The issue of assessment will be explored further in the next section.

In January I published an artcile entitled 'Personal Learning Environments - the future of eLearning?' in the second edition of e-Learning Papers, a new journal published by elearningeuropa.

The online journal subsequently invited readers to ask me questions about the paper. Very fine questions they were too. I have just got round to answering the answers will no doubt appear on the elearningeuropa portal shortly.

But if you impatient here are the questions and the answers. Seriously - I think some of the issues are worthy of further discussion - although I am not quite sure of the best forum for this. Anyway - feel free to add your comments here.

Question: Michael Feldstein, author of eLiterate weblog, writes about e-learning predictions for this year 2007 and says: "…despite a ton of buzz in the edu-blogosphere and some merit, 'e-Learning 2.0' will only see limited success in terms of widespread diffusion." Do you think this is realistic or pessimistic? Do you agree or disagree with him?
ma_moreau (France)
 
Answer: I’m not really sure what e-Learning 2.0 is or indeed if it a useful concept. But if he is referring to the use of social networking and social software applications for learning then I think he is most certainly wrong.

2007 will see increased adoption, experimentation and implementation of all manner of different software applications – most not designed for learning - to enable creativity and sharing. This includes the use of blogs, wikis, e-portfolios and social networking software.

True – the diffusion will probably be limited at institutional level. Institutions have invested a great deal of resource in Virtual Learning Environments. But we increasingly see not only students but teacher as well bypassing institutional systems to experiment with new applications for learning.
 
 
Question: You say "PLEs are not an application". So, how can we actually set up our own PLE? And you, do you have your own PLE? If yes, could you explain how is it organized?
antonf (Italy)
 
Answer: As Jan Lai says in the question below: “PLEs are more a methodology or an approach to technology enhanced learning than an application.” However they do imply a movement away from seeing e-learning taking place within external spaces – e.g. institutional Virtual Learning Environments - to an understanding of learning taking place in wider contexts – both on and off line – and including the home and work as well as institutional courses. So rather than go to institutionally controlled spaces to record and reflect on learning, the learner will establish and manage their own space. Access to that space and interchanges that take place will be under the control of the learner rather than the institution.

Yes, I do have my own PLE, comprised of a ‘mash up’ of different desktop and web based applications I use for my everyday work and increasingly reliant on local and web based services. It isn’t particularly efficient and it has some pretty big gaps at the moment – but I hope to develop it further over the next year. Central to my PLE is the people I work with and the applications I use for communication with those people.

Question: Hello Graham. I'm involved in company training and in one of your presentations you claimed that social software can be used in workplaces for informal learning. Could you tell about this more in detail? What application you would recommend and how this kind of learning could be integrated to the formal training that the company carries out? Many thanks for your time!
jennyli (Norway)
 
 Answer: There are two approaches to this. One is to use social software attempt to encourage and facilitate informal learning in the workplace. regardless of curricula. The second is to use social software to extend the present formal training. And of course both approaches could be combined. Which approach is adopted does have implications for pedagogy and learning arrangements. If employees are encouraged to take part in informal learning – outside the context of formal programmes – and if the company wishes to recognise or certify that learning – then some form of Accreditation of Prior Learning will be needed.

Anyway, coming back to the software, wikis are being extensively used for collaborative documentation and exchange of ideas. My favourite is MediaWiki. Many companies are introducing social networking software for developing communication and facilitating the formation of Communities of Practice.  ELGG is a great application for this.

Web logs are another applications which can be used for individual to reflect on their learning from everyday experience. Web logs can also be extended to develop an e-portfolio, although this will require some support.

I read somewhere that IBM are encouraging employees to make podcasts and are excited by the wealth of informal knowledge being shared through the podcasts.

Question: Hi Graham, I would like to have your point of view on the effort by Bolton University to create a "all inclusive" PLE software. I have personally a very skeptical position towards the desire to transform an informal approach to e-learning (that's how I see PLE: a methodology and not a software) into a "platform". Do you see any future for such kinds of "formalization" of PLE?
Thanks a lot, Jan
Jan Lai (Italy)
 
Answer: Hi Jan, there is always a space for innovative, well thought out experiments in developing new applications. And who knows, PLEX may turn out to be a great tool. I suspect, though, it is more a proof of concept and research tool, than an application designed for mass use. As such I think this is fine, as long as it is seen as an application developed to support the idea of the PLE, rather than a tool which is the PLE.

Question: Dear Prof. Attwell, we are using a PLE (a mash up of ELGG, wiki and social bookmarking) for sharing knowledge inside my organization (a research center).  Do you think that PLE could be considered suitable in every context (schools, universities, workplace) and for all kind of competences? In which way do you think that PLE will affect the learning and training evaluation?
epanto (Italy)

Answer: It is interesting that you say you are using such a mash up for sharing knowledge. I think one of the developments which is inherent in my concept of the Personal Learning Environment is to close the gap between Knowledge Management and learning. It seems a little absurd that such a big gap has been allowed to develop in the first place. But as to your question - could a PLE be considered suitable for every context - I think that the key ideas behind the PLE - of user controlled learning - is suitable for every context. Of course how it is introduced, the form and organisation of the PLE and the amount fo help that learners will require will differ greatly. And yes, I think it is suitable for all kinds of competences. However, once more, we have to recognise that the pedagogic approach and the form of the PLE may well differ according to subject or competence. A PLE could be used very differently for studying history or for learning to become a carpenter. But the principles are the same.

Question: Hi Graham. Today many elearning experts are talking about Immersive Learning Simulations, Rapid Interactivity tools,  Games, learning interactions, etc. How would you relate these with Personal Learning Environment?
sarus (Germany)
 
Answer: In much the same way as I see anything else working as part of a Personal Learning Environment. I don’t really understand why people are getting so excited about the use of games. After all we have always used games in learning - quizzes and competitions are hardly new. true - we are only just beginning to develop the use of on-line games and environments. But that is just because we have been very slow in developing new pedagogic approaches to e-learning. I have said before that I think the introduction of e-learning led to a reverse in pedagogic innovation. We are just getting back on track now. As for immersive environments, I think there is considerable potential. But if I look at much of what is being developed in Second Life, it is not very inspiring. We are in danger of recreating the traditional lecture theatre - the only difference being that our avatar attends instead of us in person. I also worry a little about who is managing these environments and for what purpose. I do not think that MTV, for example, has a great interest in learning. And many of these environments require considerable bandwidth and modern computers with a  fast graphic card. Nevertheless the developments here are definitely worth following.

Question: Dear professor Attwell, I'm involved in the "Personal EU" organisation concept: www.personaleu.eu. How do you see the challenges of the initiative as a step towards an European "dream team" society?
takapiru (Finland)
 
Answer: Hi - I certainly like your ideas around developing intercultural networks and I appreciate the variety of different social software tools that you are using to do it. However, I am not quite sure I understand the idea of the Personal EU.  

I tend to think that knowledge is best shared and developed through communities of practice. Communities of practice as Etienne Wenger says are based on a shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time.

Whilst the EU may style itself as a community it most certainly is not a community of practice. As such I am slightly sceptical about developing the kind of people based portal you appear to envisage. Of course it may be that I have misunderstood your ideas.

For me a dream team society would be one that rather than seeking the highest levels of implementation of information technology sought to eradicate poverty and inequality. But perhaps I am just old fashioned!

The Sounds of the Bazaar March edition has some great features.

'e-Portfolios in action - the issues' is based on the work of the European Commission funded MOSEP project.

It features interviews with staff from in the UK. Wolsingham has developed an e-Portfolio - called an EME - for for Careers development by students.

News from the Bazaar features the forthcoming Bazaar Seminar on Personal Learning Environments in Athens.

This months Bazaar interview is with Helen Keegan from the University of Salford in UK. Helen is researching the potential of Second Life for learning (although it sounds as if she is also having a lot of fun). And Blog of the month features Helen's Second Life Blog - called Troubleandslife. Helen says "it's for fun rather than research (although as times go on the lines will no doubt become increasingly blurred). Pay it a visit - its a great read.

All the jingles in this issue are produced by Dirk Stieglitz.

•  Sounds of the Bazaar 10 Full [41:34m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Introduction [1:40m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  e-Portfolios in action - the issues [12:08m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Events: Bazaar Seminar in Athen [3:30m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Interview with Helen Keegan on Second Life [16:53m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Blogsite of the month [3:16m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Epilogue [0:28m]: | Play in Popup | Download
•  Credits [0:26m]: | Play in Popup | Download

Not so many posts on this blog lately.

Well - for one thing I have been traveling a  lot and I find it difficult to blog whilst on the road.

For another thing the API for my ecto client is broken which means I have to use a web interface - this always takes longer.

But more significant is that I am doing quite a lot of things to support blogging. We have set up a MOSEP blog site using elgg spaces so that project participants can develop their own e-Portfolios. I am trying to support that process. Supporting and facilitating others in blogging is hugely rewarding. But it is difficult to be providing regular feedback and thinking up new tasks whilst keeping up the blogging on the main site at the same time. I guess its just another skill to learn.

As part of my work for the the European Bazaar project I am  running a seminar entitled Social Software and Web 2.0: a challenge to the future of schooling. You can find details about the seminar and how you can take part below. But first here is the topic of the seminar.
 
'In a recent blog post Rita Kop says: “There is currently a vast array of communications options available on the Internet. Especially young people have grasped the potential offered to them by blogs, web pages and increasingly personal spaces such as 'My Space' and 'youtube' to make links with like minded people and to invite comments and messages to their postings. The speed in which communities are being formed has surprised most observers. Participants in these developments, though, take them for granted as expressing themselves to the wider world has increasingly become part of their life style.

The education world has not grasped yet the revolution that is taking place outside the class room. The discrepancy in the way technology is being used inside and outside the class room seems to be growing.

The availability of blog and web authoring tools and their ease of use have made that a vast number of people are now engaged in interacting on the Internet. It has created a huge leap forward in moving people on from being consumers to becoming producers of information.

As educators know, the pace of change within institutions is a lot slower than outside the brick walls, which raises questions about the ability of formal education institutions to keep engaged the generation that lives in a technology saturated world and has grown up with technology.”

At the same time researchers have begun to explore the idea of Personal Learning environments or PLEs. Rather than access a single learning application or a walled institutional learning area, the idea of a PLE is that learners can configure different services and tools to develop their own learning environment, bringing together informal learning from the home, the workplace as well as more formal provision by education institutions. The PLE is controlled by the learner and as well as offering an environment for accessing different information and knowledge allows access to web based publishing and other opportunities for creating content and expressing and exchanging ideas.

The idea behind the PLE is to harness the power and potential of social software and web 2.0 applications for learning.

As Graham Attwell has pointed out PLEs may be a seriously disruptive development, challenging the present model of schooling. The seminar is intended to examine the changing ways in which we are using technology for learning, to look at the potential of Personal Learning Environments and to discuss the implications for the future of our education systems.

This could include (but is not limited to) the following issues:

• Young people are increasingly using social networking sites and social software applications - but are they learning?
• What does the new uses of technology for learning imply for pedagogy and the future role of teachers
• What is the role of school in the future of more and more learning takes place over the internet
• How can technology supported informal learning be recognised
• How disruptive are the new technologies to the education system - is it just a bubble?
• How can Personal Learning Environments be reconciled with the social nature of learning?
• What are the implications of technology supported learning and PLEs for social equity within education?
• What sort of technological infrastructure should the education system be providing for learning?
• If content is increasingly created by teachers an learners and is open for access, how will we guarantee quality?
• Does increasing learner control and autonomy spell the end of centralised curricula?

and

• How dude, where’s my data?'

Click 'more' to find out how you can take part.

Bit of strange title, but this is my presentation to last weeks Ten Competence project conference in Manchester.

The conference itself was extremely interesting and I will be adding a couple of entries over various contributions in the next few days.

Meanwhile back to my presentation. I have talked before about how school is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the way people are learning in todays society. This extends beyond issues of pedagogy and includes both curriculum and the way we organise our education systems. In the paper and presentation characterise it as an "industrial model of schooling".

Whilst new approaches to learning using social software and seeking to recognise informal learning are welcome and necessary, I am sceptical that such model projects can be generalised within the present system. Indeed, the evidence of many, many innovative projects is that without project funding and special dispensation for innovation, they cannot be sustained beyond the lifetime of the project.

The answer is not 'better projects' but a thorough going reform of our education systems, indeed a new understanding of the role and process of learning in our societies. Above all we need to deschool society. OK, I know that this may be unpopular or unpalatable for most politicians. But someone, sooner or later, is going to have to address the issue.

In the meantime researchers have a key role, not just in pointing out that the schooling system is breaking down, but in developing radical, agile and pedagogically attractive models for learning within society and provoking a wider debate on the role of learning. Click on the image below to download a PDF version of the presentation - if you would like another format please get in touch.

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