The Wales-Wide Web

I am increasingly interested in issues of quality in teaching and learning. So this announcement of the scrapping of public sector targets reported in the Guardian has to be welcomed. It is very clear that targets do not work as a measure of quality.......has the UK government finally realised it?

Mr Burnham said: "We will avoid wherever possible the more crude approach of setting a one-size-fits-all target that is dropped down from on high ... The direction of travel is for public services to look and feel differently in different parts of the country. We want them to face downwards and outwards, having a dialogue with their local communities rather than with the centre."

Thats fine but I'm not in the least but sure what looking downwards and outwards mean. Does this mean being imposed top-down? And what form does such a dialogue mean. I fear this may be just more focus groups. And that equally does not guarantee quality

Technorati Tags: quality

Joise Fraser points to the "frenzy of e-Portfolio related activity in the UK at the moment".

She explains how "The UK Government’s e-strategy, Harnessing Technology outlined a clear commitment to ensuring learners have access to Personal Learning Space (PLS) where they can “store coursework, course resources, results, and achievements…with the potential to support e-portfolios”, available in every school and college by 2007-08", and goes on to say: "It’s proved to be a popular idea – with many institutions engaging in research and investigation, and even becoming early adopters of the currently available e-portfolio products."

'Harnessing Technolog'y is an interesting document - unusually so for an official government publication. However, whilst the policy does promote e-Portfolios, the main thrust is less ambitious.

The major emphasis is on personalisation. So far so good. But it is open to interpretation what is meant by that. My reading is that they mean primarily the ability of teachers to provide individually focused learning materials for learners and the use of intelligent agents (or something like that) to provide individual learning pathways. This falls far short of the more radical idea of Personal Learning environments and, critically, leaves control of learning in the hands of the institutions and teachers.

Still - that such a debate is even happening is good news.

Technorati Tags: e-portfolios, education policy, Persanal Learning Environments

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | UK failing to keep students on after 16, report shows:

From the Education Guardian. "More pupils leave school at 16 in the United Kingdom than in most other industrialised countries, a decision for which they are economically disadvantaged for life, an international study reported today." the report they are citing is by the OECD.

This was a big topic of discussion at the ECER VETNET conference last week. What is surprising is that despite years of policy initiatives and constant tinkering with the system, the proportion staying on is falling.

Ominous little bit on page 99 of the UK Labour Party election manifesto. Didn't hear anything about it in the election campaign - but then again its not exactly a bedtime read. Presented on their web site in a horrible Flash electronic book format. I have a nasty fear this means the UK government is going to try to revive the long contested EU copyright proposal during their EU presidency. (For a quick summary of Labour Party manifesto ICT policy commitments see Catherine Howell's excellent and niftily named blog "Ida takes tea".)

"We will modernise copyright and other forms of protection of intellectual property rights so that they are appropriate for the digital age.We will use our presidency of the EU to look at how to ensure content creators can protect their innovations in a digital age. Piracy is a growing threat and we will work with industry to protect against it.

Gates heads back to school in open source spat - silicon.com:

Gloves are off for FLOSS playground challenge...

Microsoft is ready to fight competitors entering the IT education market, it said on Monday, after a leaked government report highlighted the benefits of open source software for schools.

In an email to ZDNet UK, the software company said that competition was welcome but that it offered more supported applications than rival open source providers.

Stephen Uden, group manager of education relations for Microsoft, wrote: "Competition in the software market is good for customers because it ensures that they get a good deal as it drives choice and innovation.

"There are some 5,000 third party applications available to run on Microsoft Windows operating system but only a handful of applications supported by the open source community. We offer free support and training materials to help teachers and students make the most of their technology."

Teaching Ideas & Resources - TES - The Times Educational Supplement 2:

The UK Times Educational Supplement (TES) ran this as their lead story this week. TES is the leading educational weekly publication in the UK. This story is going to run for some time to come. I always thought OSS would take off but never imagined we would see the venerable TES printing something like "Find out how much open source software could save your school in this week's TES".

It is clear OSS has mainstreamed in education. Now all we have to do is improve the software and get the pedagogy right!

Obviously I am not the only one thinking about the politics of e-learning. Just got this bizarre email from the British Education Technology Association (Becta) Research Network list server. I want the politics of e-learning discussed. Elections seem a good time for this. So what does the government do - require Becta to close the list.

I hereby declare that until the 7th of May this blog is open to discuss the politics of e-learning.

FROM ICTRN:
Dear Members,

This discussion group will be suspended during the election period (from the dissolution of Parliament on Friday 8 April until Friday 6 May. All services provided by non-departmental public bodies (such as Becta) must comply with the General Election Guidance issued by the Cabinet Office
(http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/propriety_and_ethics/publications/pdf/electguide2005.pdf) which includes the suspension of discussion groups.

From today, no messages will be posted to the list until
7th May.

OK - this blog is mainly about education - and pretty much focused on technology. But it was always supposed to be a bit wider and especially to be more political than it has become of late.

Not just because I am interested in politics but because I still believe that ideology and politics are fundamental to the shaping of our future used of technology.

So no apologies for this post - which is a copy of my April column for the Welsh radical newspaper Seren (Socialist, Environmental and Republican News. For the benefit of the uniniated - Ponty is an abbreviation for Pontypridd - a small town in industrial South Wales. Clwb y Bont is the local Welsh club (and the lace where Tom Jones started out.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Software glitches hit hundreds of schools:

Oh dear, oh dear. Here's me plodding along, really thinking that the use of ICT for learning can be a tool for personal liberation and enrichment. And here is the UK ******* government, issuing edicts on the use of ICT to police students. ID numbers, checks on homework, up to the hour reports on punctuality and all the rest. And I thought it was about pedagogy and learning.

The Education Guardian report says:

"The strategy also says that every pupil should have their own webspace to publish examples of their work so that employers, universities and their parents can check on their progress. The "electronic portfolio" would document all their achievements at school or college and provide examples of their work.

An online portal will be created as a one-stop shop for information for pupils, their parents, and people working in schools to gain access to information about education and training.

Ministers are also considering how data on pupils could be streamlined so each has an identification number throughout their school, college and university career which would allow them to keep a record of their schooling, as they change institution or slip in and out of education.

The document tries to draw together what it says has been a "haphazard" growth of the use of "e-learning" in schools and to set new standards for schools to work towards.

While some schools are now ploughing ahead with online submissions of homework and up-to-the-hour reports on pupil attendance and punctuality for parents, others are still failing to provide good basic lessons in information communication technology."

But an interesting article for a couple of reasons. Eric is pushing the use of handhelds for books. I am intrigued by the potential of handhelds - but having had a couple over the years have never really used them. The keyboards always get on my nerves. But I suppose for reading a book you do not need to use the keyboard much. Secondly, I am not so sure I can get used to reading on a screen - but I could give it a go.

But the main point to his blog entry is the idea of a Left Book Club in electronic form. I think that is an idea with tremendous potential. Not just to get better circulation for the more well known socialist writers like Chomsky - but for opening up the potential for publishing and sharing ideas to a much wider range of contributers. Of course the web does that. but the web is an uncomfortable media for reading longer text contributions.

Books (and shorter publications) available on handhelds could open up a whole new vista for democtratic and socialist debate .

OK - so there are not a great deal of comments or trackbacks here. But do not think the World Wide Web has no influence. Got this fine email from Marc Jones - the editor of the Welsh monthly newspaper Seren - to which I contribute a column with the same name as this blog

"By the way", he says, "my son Huw and I have become confirmed Werder Bremen fans - we watch the Bundesliga every Monday night on Sgorio - a fine example of Welsh internationalism! Cracking striker - Ainson? (can't remeber the spelling)"

The name's Ailton, Marc, or Tony to the fans. Thanks for the feedback. Keep the internationalism going.

Blogging is generally said to be like keeping a diary. I think this is wrong (although of course some people do use their blogs like that). For me there is little point in recording that I spent Wednesday evening in the Horner Ecke pub with Lars and we spent two (animated) hours trying to spend Werder Bremen's Champion's league booty and considering the possibility of Basturk moving from Leverkusen, or that on Friday I was in the same pub with Philip and Imke, where we talked of many interesting things including Imke's wedding dress and whether i shopuld move to a new flat. Such things are interesting to me but I can see little point in recording them (although I will write more accolades to the brilliant Werder Bremen in the next few days).

Instead I see of this blog as a notebook - somewhere I can record things of interest to me (and perhaps others) as they occur. Of course, I could write them in a notebook. But, firstly i cannot usually read my handwriting, second I will lose or forget the notebook, thirdly it is very useful (if only fort future cutting and sticking) to have these notes in electronic form, fourthly it is very handy to be able to refer others to my notes on occasion, and, finally I like the writing format of mixing the insubstantial, passing and ephemeral with things I think may be of some longer term interest ( if only to me).

Last week we were invited by The European Commission to Brussels for what they call a concertation meeting. The meeting brought together some 100 representatives of the European Minerva (http://minerva.euproject.net/) and eLearning Action Plan (http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/cha/c11050.htm) projects (Minerva is the e-learning strand of the Socrates education programme). Prior to the concertation meeting, which took place on Thursday and Friday, we were invited to a meeting with two other projects - JOIN and FILTER, which the project officer, Brian Holmes, felt were close in aims to our project - to explore the possibilities of working together.

Rather than write a traditional meeting report, I have written this account of the meetings in the form of a blog - or web log - entry. The main reason for this is that as always with such meetings many of the most interesting discussions took place outside the formal meeting and I wanted to capture those discussions for SIGOSEE (http://www.ossite.org) partners and members of the Special Interest Group (SIG).

Back on line after a three week break caused by a broken computer (after its car crash I talked about previously, the iBook kept going for another ten days, then expired quietly with a power management failure).

I write a monthly column for the Welsh socialist newspeper, Seren. Here is this months contribution.

A belated happy new years greetings. Its good to be back. Whilst I would really like to talk about football (courtesy of the winter mid season break, Werder Bremen have been top of the Bundesliga for the last five weeks!) there are an awful lot of politics going on at the moment.

For the last five months the students have been protesting against attempts to impose fees for courses. There have been strikes, occupations and numerous demonstrations with many of Germany's leading universities now on strike until the end of the semester in February.

I think the students are right. The fees may look minimal by UK standards but as students in England and Wales have found to their cost, its the principle that counts. Once the idea of fees is established then they can quickly be increased.

It is striking how the issue of student fees is so contentious throughout Europe. Ok, it could be explained by the influence of what are known here as 'old 68ers'; as the parents of the present generation of students. The press tries ot explain it as a "middle class revolt". I do not find either of these explanations convincing, even though they may contain a grain of truth. I think that at the heart of the protest lies far more important issues - the question of whether learning and by extension, knowledge, are a public right or a private good.

Putting it bluntly, what is going on throughout Europe is an attempt to privatise education, with market forces determining the level of fees and parental and student income depending the quantity and quality of education available. Forget all that nonsense form Blair and Schroeder about access - its just a smokescreen. The German government showed its true hand last week when the education minister published proposals to establish elite universities. Even the EU's leading education bureaucrat, Commissioner Vivienne Redding, was led tyo comment that Germany should sort out the basic problems with its education system before thinking about elite universities. Even more strangely, Bild am Sonntag, Germany's equivalent of News of the World, carried a full page interview with Redding!

It is not just university education that is effected. The European Commission has set in train a series of meetings between European education ministries through something known as the Copenhagen process with the overt aim of harmonising Europe's vocational education and training systems. Once more the real intent is to liberalise education and training provsion and open up the market for private training providers.

But privatising education is only part of the battle. The real fight is over knowledge. Before you rush to say the idea of private knowledge is stupid, think of how the idea of private water must have seemed a couple of hundred years ago. With capitalism ever more dependent on the knowledge and skills of employees as part of the process of producing surplus value and productivity, they desperately want to treat knowledge and skills as a commodity, to be exchanged on the market as any other. Witness the attempts to patent the human genome.

It is not all doom and gloom though. The emergence of open source software has shown the possibility of other collective models of development and licensing. At the same time the widespread use of file sharing programmes on the internet has shown that people are not prepared to pay rep-off prices for music . Music is a form of human expression, just like speech, and cannot be treated as just another commodity.

That's it for this months rant. As ever I would be delighted to hear back form any of you. Keep up the protests. But before I go I cannot resist telling you the latest German football story. Werder Bremen have asked FIFA to extend the half time break to allow fans more time to purchase and consume Wurst (sausages) and Bier (beer). That's one change I do support.

Back from a quick trip to Ireland, Wales and England. On the way back, just outside Hanover airport, someone managed to ram my taxi at about 120 kilometres an hour. I am fine but my poor Powerbook is seriously injured. Having been literally cut from the wreck it has only about half the screen pixels working and the case is bent and torn open. But it still works! Have got an external keyboard and screen until I can find someone to sell me a new one (Apple supply is as crazy as usual).

Anyway, the main point of this entry is a quick reflection on the technology kids were going for this Christmas. I spent Christmas day and Boxing day in Derby in England with my brother, his partner and their three children - all girls - aged 15, 12 and 10, and my parents.

Usual obscene orgy of conspicuous consumption. Why does the UK go in for such wild consumer excesses at Christmas?

The big Christmas success were vaious music machines. Chritmas day and boxing day me and the kids were queing up for use of the computers for sharing our music whilst the other grown ups looked on in bemusement.

But the other big hit was something called the Dance Mat - a foot driven inetrface for the play station - providing different levels of difficulty in dancing on eight different key pads in time with the music and the on-sceen instructions. All accompanyed by computer generated encouragement such as "You're looking good", "Keep it up" - or rising crescendos og booing when the footwork fell out of pace. A few things interested me here. First was the fascinations of the kids and their dogged detrmination to improve their skills and scores. Unfortunaely the youngest one decided to base her efforts on a Spice Girls song! Ther second wa sthat although an on-screen androgenous digitalised dancer seemd to dance to the music and provide guidance ot the steps, the reality was far from it. It was far more a exercise in aerobics than in dancing. And of course there was no creativity or room to make up your own inetrpretations of the music.

But, on the plus side, it showed the potential for completely different interfaces to a computer for learning. Why are we so tied to the keyboard as an input device? But also it points again to the games industry being far more imagoinitive in design than the education technology providers. Lets hope that is soon to change.

More on this later this week.

It is pretty clear e-learning is not working. Despite all the hype learners just are not being turned on by it. That is not to say that there is not a lot of e-learning going on and some very fine learning software and content has been developed. But e-learning is not transforming the learning landscape in the way it was supposed to.

There is plenty of debate as to why. Most often cited are the lack of training of teachers in facilitating e-learning, the need for new pedagogic approaches and a lack of quality learning materials.

I think it goes deeper than this. If there is to be an expansion of e-learning it will be predominantly in what is known as the lifelong learning sector. This means involving adults in on-going learning. This in turn means pursauding enterprises to support e-learning. Whilst large companies are generally developing and implementing training plans and programmes - and many of them have embraced e-learning - in small and medium enterprises, which employ the majority of people, there is no culture of training and learning. Without such a culture e-learning has little chance.

The second problem, which may be more fundamental, involves the nature of knowledge. Much learning happens through the aquisition and practice of tacit knowledge - defined by Polyani as knowledge we do not know we have. This knowledge is acquired informally - through social interaction or through practice. Of course it can be said that traditional classroom learning and training also neglects tacit knowledge. But I think we have underestimated the hidden curricla processees that take place in formal learning and training contexts through social interaction between indivudals during the formal learning. Thus, very often, both explcit and tacit knowledge are acquired side by side - and may interact.

The problem with e-learning is it isolates the learner from a social context. Even well designed constructivist learning using group exercises fails to support tacit knowledge acquisition. This is not to say it is impossible for e-learning to support the acquistion of tacit knowledge. Knownet is working on two projects - one for careers guidance professionals and one for school students - which do focus on shared knowledge (more about these in the next few days). However we do need a very thorough rethink of the interface between knowledge and learning and what role technology might play in such an interface.