The Wales-Wide Web

Great gig last week at the danish Knowledge Laboratory. Thanks to Niels Henrik Helms for inviting me - thanks to everyone else for interesting discussions. It really is good to be in the Nordic countries - the understanding of links between knowledge development and learning in communities of practice is stunning. I think it is in these countries that we will start to see more generalised movements away for Learning management Systems towards Personal Learning Environments. I can remember six years ago being in Tampere University in Finland and be stunned to see the students accessing their email on open access computers using the Unix command line!

And whilst it is no longer trendy to talk about Action Research, that tradition still exists albeit in rarified forms.

The one thing I left out of my presentation was licenses. talking to people at lunch time, they were concerned about the licensing mess but had not heard of Creative Commons. Its a mistake to assume that just because the people on the Ed Tech speaking and conference all use CC licenses the rest of the world knows about them too,. We need to continue to show and explain how Creative Commons works.

Anyway - for any of you reading this blog who were at the conference last week - here - as promised - is the link to Creative Commons.

Technorati Tags: Copyright

The Wales Wide Web - first with all the news that matters.

We are happy to be able to inform readers that Sara Zondergeld is expecting a child. The baby is due in May. Sara says she does not mind whether it is a boy or a girl.

Best wishes to Sara and Ray.

The second post on the Social Skills - Social Software conference.

I was trying to work out why I enjoyed this event so much.one thing was great people and great conversations- hi to Sebastion - both of them, John, Wilfred, Siegfried, Wolgang, Helen, Lee, Cecile and Veronica and her colleagues from Salzburg research. Sorry if I missed anyone out.

The food was good and the beer was free, that always helps.

But most important I think was a sense of community and common purpose which is missing at the big educational technology conferences. Sebastion and me talked about this. he said he now only goes to the small conferences. Why pay ridiculous amounts of money for events like Educa Berlin when you can gain eral ideas form events such as Salzburg.

The second point was the buzz about social software. Yes, I know there are some interesting pilot applications in the UK. But in Austria they seem to have taken social software to heart. Austria, like Germany, has been slow in implementing educational technology. The theory of uneven and combined development says that hen a country does adopt a technology is bypasses previous stages of development and jumps in at the cutting edge. Could it be that Austria is going to bypass those dire years of Learning management Systems and focus on new pedagogies using social software? It certainly looks possible.

One last point about the Salzburg conference. It was amazingly well organised. And Veronica seemed so calm. I wish I could do that.

Technorati Tags: describing knowledge, e-portfolios, social software

O I am in Salzburg for the 'Social software - Social skills' workshop organised by Salzburg research.

It is in a beautiful conference centre called St Virgil, just outside Salzburg. Arrived just in time for lunch and got into interesting discussion with Wolfgang Greller from the University of Klagenfurt and Helen Barret.

Wolfgang is organising professional development at his university. He has developed parallel tracks - including self learning and coaching for staff in the university,. He finds that it is the women who overwhelmingly choose personal coaching whilst them men prefer the self learning route.

This led to a wider discussion on gender differences and how it relates to portfolios.

Anyway at some point I got the microphone up and running and recorded most of the discussion. Will edit in the train next week and hopefully you will be able to listen to the discussion in the next Sounds of the Bazaar,

Later today I am interviewing Shane Sutherland from the Pebble Pad portfolio project at Wolverhampton University and my old frond, Wilfred Rubens who is involved in organising Dutch edubloggers, amongst other things.

Technorati Tags: blogging, e-portfolios, social software

The conference on Open Source for Education in Europe, organized by the SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects, in conjunction with the Open University of the Netherlands, got underway Monday morning.

I got to Heerlen yesterday afternoon. Fred de Vries and his team from the Open University had organised everything perfectly, but we felt the need to be here for the non existent last minute preparations for the conference. Went to the pub and has a pleasant afternoon with Ray and alexandra and the rest of the gang.

Last night has a very fine meal in a castle near here. Talked a bit with Stephen Downes who is one of the key note speakers for the conference.

I must admit to being nervous this morning. Despite having some 130 delegates enrolled a horrible number had not paid before the final deadline. In reality my fears were (reasonably groundless) with over 100 turning up by lunchtime. Great work by Marina on the conference organisation desk.

The morning discussion was given over to four key note presentations, myself, Alexandra Toedt, Colin Tatersall and Stephen Downes. I will post more on the content and discussions. If you would like to catch up with the presentations we are trying to get them all posted on the conference website.

A copy of my presentation - entitled 'Learning with Open Source' is attached below.

Technorati Tags: open source

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Special Reports | Guardian columnist Ted Wragg dies:

This is very sad - he was one of the good guys.

"Ted Wragg, one of the best known figures in English education, has died suddenly at the age of 67.

He retired formally as head of Exeter University's school of education in 2003 after 32 years but an energetic flow of articles and activities - including regular columns in the Guardian - continued to make his genial presence robustly felt in debates about education.

Constantly defending the classroom teacher against bureaucracy and misguided political initiatives, Wragg was hero worshipped in staff rooms, if not in Whitehall or the offices of the schools inspectorate, Ofsted."

Sage - Ye olde Rhondda and Pontypridd chronicles:
"Read an article in the paper earlier about the dangers of bing drinking and it frghtened the shits out of me so I've decided that's it - no more reading for me."

Something of as cult site in Pontypridd (well Pontypridd doesn't get s lot of cult choice). The journals of your Pontypridd taxi driver shows how humour is so good in blogs and the ability of the mundane and local to be vibrant and global. Visit the site and enjoy it!

Just found that Teemu Arina from the Flosse Posse has put up a great blog of the session on Open Source at the ITK conference (Interactive Technology in Education) in Finland.

Am trying desperately to get the presentations on the web but my server is giving me proxy errors. Hoping we can sort this out tomorrow.

This post has three purposes.

first I wanted to try some pictures in my blog and see if it works.

Second I am bad at taking pictures and my friend Daniela is great at it - I want to persuade her to share her photos through Flickr.

Lastly - I think Daniela' s project is brilliant - see more below to see what she said about her robots in an email to me and hopefully if there is some interest she will add more.