Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

We would like to welcome Ilona Buchem to Pontydysgu blogs. Ilona’s Polish language blog is called ‘Paradygmat’. Paradygmat, she explains, “means paradigm and I hope that the Latin origin makes this word sound familiar to a broader audience.

Based on the approach of Thomas Kuhn, the term paradigm can be seen as a set of practices, such as methods of observation and interpretation, that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. A paradigm shift may occur when shortcomings of the basic assumptions in the prevailing paradigm build up and can no longer be ignored. The existing paradigm is enlarged and frontiers of knowledge and methods are pushed forward. In this sense paradigm shift refers to a major change in certain thought-patterns. So the idea is write and discuss about changes and trends in educational sciences and education research with the focus on ICT-based learning and Social Media.

I would like to focus on how educational sciences are shifting towards so-called “post-normal science” with more openness, interdisciplinarity, exchange, debating, incorporating multiple viewpoints, stronger interactions with practice etc.”

We hope you will enjoy reading and engaging with Ilona’s ideas. Whilst many of you may not read Polish, we have provided a link to Google translate on the blog page.

Ok – nothing dramatic. But we are slowly adding to the functionality and features on Wales Wide Web.

Firstly we have updated our PB wiki – accessible through the badge on the right hand side of this page. We are using the wiki to record both work in progress about different themes and ideas and about projects we are working on. We hope the wiki will prove especially useful for those wanting access to source materials around particular topics.

We have also used the Goggle API to provide access to Google translate fort those unable to read Maria’s blog in Greek language. OK – Google translate isn’t perfect. But it does provide a good overview of her blog articles in different languages.

Jo is working at adding easy access to academic papers produced by members of the Pontydysgu team. We set out to do this once before using the BIBTEX standard through CiteULike, However, in practice this turned out too unwieldy. After a lot of thought we have decided to use Scribd. We are planning to embed them on the publications page of the site. In the meantime if you can’t wait you can search for Graham Attwell on Scribd (more papers to go up in the next few days).

And, finally, we are embarking on a long overdue redesign of our projects pages. Pontydysgu takes part in many projects. Our previous page design was not really fit for purpose and we are redesigning the pages, dividing the projects into current and completed past work.

If you have suggestions for how we can further improve the site please do leave us a message.

I Love the commoncraft stop motion videos. This one is described as “Time-lapse footage of the making of “Twitter Search in Plain English”. Music: Freestyle Percussion Magik: Flamenco Flight.”

I found this video from YouTube on Will Richardson’s blog. Will asks:

If at some point in the fairly near future just about every high school kid is going to have a device that connects to the Internet, how much longer can we ask them to stuff it in their lockers at the beginning of the day?

How are we going to have to rethink the idea that we have to provide our kids a connection? Can we even somewhat get our brains around the idea of letting them use their own?

At what point do we get out of the business of troubleshooting and fixing technology? Isn’t “fixing your own stuff” a 21st Century skill?

How are we helping our teachers understand the potentials of phones and all of these shifts in general?

I have just finished reading the ‘New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now‘ report by the Expert Group on New Skills for New Jobs prepared for the European Commission. it is hard to know how important these advisory reports are – but there is little doubt that they reflect the direction of thinking of both [...]

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I spent a lot of time yesterday evaluating ‘virtual classrooms’ or spaces for online simultaneous communication.
The background: over the last two years I have recognised, presented and participated in a considerable number of seminars, workshops and conferences using Elluminate. Whilst it has its bad days, in general Elluminate is reliable and I am fairly confident [...]

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I was greatly inspired by the Wise Kids conference on Young People in a Digital World – Preparing, Inspiring and Supporting, held in Bangor in Wales on Wednesday. This was the second of two regional conferences, with videos from the first, in Swansea earlier in the week are available now online (the video by Tanya [...]

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Much of our work in Pontydysgu involves trying to support the learning and knowledge development needs of others – individuals and organisations. So it was interesting when I was asked what were our learning needs. This is what I wrote:
Pontydysgu is an SME, based in Wales, UK.
It employees one full time worker, one intern student [...]

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Interesting results from the latest Pew Internet survey on adults use of social networking sites in the United States (I wish we had a European equivalent). The survey found:

79% of American adults used the internet in 2009, up from 67% in Feb. 2005
46% of online American adults 18 and older use a social networking site [...]

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A quick blogsquat from Jenny Hughes….
I have been fascinated by the Yellow Arrow project and my mind is working overtime thinking of of ways it could be extended from art to education.
For those of you who have not come across it yet, the Yellow Arrow project is a global public art project that started in [...]

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More thoughts on competence – mostly in my attempts to develop an idea of how mobile devices could be used for learning in the workplace – and in particular for practice based and informal learning.
In my last post on this subject I pointed to definitions of competence from German research seeing the main aim of [...]

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I have just come back from the Joint Technology Enhanced Learning Winter School. It brought together young and senior researchers in the field of TEL in meaningful discussions. It was great fun too.
Each day new topics were introduced and there was an effort to make the sessions as much interactive as possible. In [...]

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The best technology and most useful technology I have come across whilst working at Pontydysgu is probably the use of porgrammes such as skype and flashmeeting to support online meetings of more than one or two people. It was not until my Mum called me to ask good programmes to use that I realised the [...]

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Last night @m_a_s_c , @krajagopal and I were talking about education. In General!
It all started with talking about doing a PhD and not feeling we have the same kind of ‘endurance’ we had when we first went to University. The three of us, although in different countries, have experienced similar educational structures, which basically [...]

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Nareszcie mam chwilę na mój pierwszy … ojej, jak to sie nazywa po polsku … aha, znalazłam, wpis na blogu! Eureka! Ja się przez tego bloga nauczę przynajmniej nowej wersji polskiego – polskiego 2.0  Bardzo Was z góry przepraszam, za moje ewentalne potyczki językowe, ale mieszkam poza Polską od jakiś 10 lat i [...]

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Chalkface is an area where we are planning to collect together all those posts that deal with stuff to do with classroom practice.
There are several reasons for doing this.  One of them is that I am basically never going to get it together to write a blog.  If I have something to say, I just [...]

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