Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

We had a long search for a suitable May Day greetings video. Jen and me did not finally agree. Anyway this is her choice. I will post my choice on the Wales Wide Web tomorrow. May Day greetings to you all.
Great music from Tom Robinson and brilliant graphics from RedClydeside.

I am working with Jenny Hughes on some research for the Mature project. And in the course of developing a few research proposals Jenny asked me what Layered learning is. I had to admit I didn’t know. So it was off to Google. And up came an abstract of a paper by Kumar, Torr and Zisserman which contained the wonderful phrase “efficent, loopy belief propagation.” Wow!. I wish I had written that.

Layered learning seem to have been developed by researchers working to program robots to play football. And basically it refers to breaking down skills and knowledge into a series of hierarchically defined layers. So you might teach a robot to kick the ball and to run. And you might teach them to watch what the other team is doing and to be aware of where their own team robots are and so on. And at the end of the the day you synthesis the different layers of learning to develop a football playing robot. Jenny questions whether people learn in this way. Of course sometimes we do synthesize chunks of learning to carry out a task. But just as often we may analyse a whole chunk of learning to derive the different skills and knowledge from it. In that way we can distinguish analytic learning from synthetic learning. And layered learning appears to focus solely on the synthetic learning process.

Be glad to hear from anyone who knows more than me about this.

Here is a curious story from the Guardian web site.

“A school is employing sixth formers as supply teachers because of a shortage of qualified staff. Chalfonts community college in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, pays its 16-, 17- and 18-year-old sixth formers £5 for each 50-minute class they take. The 24 teenagers follow teachers’ lesson plans, instructing 11- to 16-year-olds in subjects they may no longer take themselves.

The school trains them in behaviour management, lesson preparation and the importance of confidentiality. An older adult is with them in the classroom, but may not be a trained teacher and does not take the lesson. The school is thought to be the only one in the UK to have taken this approach to supply teacher shortages.

…..John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said there was “every argument for older pupils to mentor younger ones”, but they should not be used as “quasi-supply staff”.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said the system was acceptable “as long as the sixth former is under the direction and supervision of a qualified person and is adhering to the lesson plan devised by the class teacher”.”

As regular readers of this blog will know I have no problem with the idea of peer learning. But if the students are doing the work of teachers why should they not be paid the going rate for the job. 5 pound an hour is a rip off. And still more curious is the schools idea of what training the students need to teach – behaviour management, lesson preparation and the importance of confidentiality. Nothing about teaching and learning. Or rather ‘teaching by numbers’. Is this really what makes a good teacher?

Here I am: back again with my blog. The long winter months are over. So, it is time to continue after a period of hibernation. Well, to be honest, the weather has not been the reason for the annoying silence on this blog.

Obviously, when I started this blog I took a more difficult task than I thought. I wanted to write on innovations in the field of vocational education and training (VET) and on related European research. This turned out to be a hard ride. I must confess that I envy the ease with which my fellow blogger Graham Attwell continues his touring round the Wales-Wide-Web. I also welcome our new neighbour Cristina and hope that her learning journeys are easier than mine. Anyway, as there is life in the blog-pool of Pontydysgu, I want give a fresh start on my thoughts on I-Europe and on the future of European VET research.

When I started the blog I looked back at a special moment: the debate on a draft research agenda “I-Europe” in an open meeting of European VET researchers in September 2003. I described how we felt a “momentum” for shaping a joint research agenda – and then lost the momentum by the time the first draft was there. I put this episode into a bigger picture and analysed the change in the European cooperation climate – the loss of the perspective of ‘open future’. Then, I tried to make some points how to get back the perspective towards open futures (and what role the themes of the “I-Europe” agenda could play in this effort). And then: the rest was silence, at least for some time.

So, what was I doing? And – given my aims – what went wrong? Apparently I was trying to open a discussion on future VET reseearch and on related European cooperation initiatives. Yet, I managed to hang the starting points high up in the spheres of no-man’s-land. Also, I seem to have given myself a position like the Oracle of Delphoi or as Cassandra of Troy) – the one who can see the future but can only give a cryptic message what might be expected.

So, what is the cure? Apparently, I have to give up the style of oracle (making visionary statements) and try to adopt the style of Socrates (making questions and comments that could tease out ideas and initiatives).

I think this has been enough for the moment. Let us see what I can produce for my next blog entry – and when I will find time for it.

We have upgraded the Pontydysgu web site to WordPress 2.5.1. I have had only a limited time to look at it but it seems both a big and welcome upgrade. Particularly nice is the new dashboard – for non WordPress users, this is the back end where you do things. In the past the default view provided far too many options, many of which most users would seldom acccess. Now many of these features have been hidden, meaning you do not see them unless you need them.

This is important for me. I know my way round the old Dashboard. But we are using WordPress MU for our Freefolio e-portfolio application. Not only do I worry at the barrier the dashboard design offers to new users, but in focusing on navigating the Dashboard users may be distracted from the primary use of the sofware – to develop their portfolios. It would appear that an update to WordPress MU to incorporate the new features of the WordPress single user version is planned int he near future. This is good news for us.

The last in our one week series of live webcasts sponsored by the Jisc Emerge programme.

If you missed the Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar at the Benefits Realisation day of the Emerge Conference, here is your second chance. The one hour live webcast was recorded and is now available as an MP3 podcast.

You can listen in line or download the programme to your MP3 player of choice.

The programme features:

• Steven Warbuton and Paul Bailey on the Emerge Bazaar
• Jai Muhkerjee on the Moose project
• The Sounds of the Bazaar competition
• A live phone in on the future of Technology Enhanced Learning
• Mike Wald on the MacFob project
• George Roberts – the last poet in Oxford.

Music is from the Exotica album by Les Juanitos from the Jamendo Creative Commons supported web site – www.jamendo.com

Thanks to everyone who helped produce the programme and especially to the producer, Dirk Stieglitz.

The Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar Live [ 1:09:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1628)

After yesterdays brilliant 24 hour Earthcast, we are happy to invite you to the next LIVE web cast from Sounds of the Bazaar.

We will be broadcasting an hour long programme beginning tomorrow, Thursday 24 April at 1600 UK Summer Time, 1700 Central European Summer Time.

The programme is part of the three day Jisc Emerge on-line conference.

We will be featuring a number of the Emerge projects, launching the new Emerge Bazaar and hosting a phone in on the future of technology enhanced learning. And, as ever, spinning a few tunes from the Creative Commons supported Jamendo web site.

We extend an invitation to all Wales Wide Web readers to join the show. Just go to te following address in oyur browser and a stream shoudl open in your MP3 application:

http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u

Look forward to talking with you tomorrow.

I’ve spent most of the day listening to the Earthday 24 hour webcast, Earthcast. The webcast was hosted by the World Bridges Edtechtalk. And it was so cool. I think this account from John Pallister on the e-Portfolios and PLTs list serve summarises perfectly the event.

“A strange thing happened today, ordinary people from around our world collaborated to do the extraordinary. They adopted a philosophy that if they were not breaking the tools and technology, they were not
trying hard enough – they tried pretty hard, for 24 hours! A few things hung up on them, and a few things did not like working with each other, but what an amazing achievement. I listened to children,
of all ages, and teachers from around the world talking to one another and broadcasting to anyone in the world that had an internet connection……….

I found myself listening to eartcast08 this morning, I was rapidly drawn in to what was happening, the enthusiasm of the students from around the world was addictive and energising. I soon had a Year 12
student contributing, asking some of the presenters why they were flying around the world to attend so many conferences, he was answering questions from people somewhere the USA and was being listened to by people all over the world. He went on to initiate a quite a heated discussion about national energy policies. He was a
student who 5 minutes earlier was simply having a conversation with friends in the common room – then he found himself talking to the world! From an ordinary class room in County Durham, at no cost.

What is in this type of activity for our learners – well, just about everything that you would need to develop learners as ‘Effective participators ‘ — “Young people actively engage with issues that affect them and those around them. They play a full part in the life of their school, college, workplace or wider community by taking
responsible action to bring improvements for others as well as themselves.” AND a bucket-full of communication and citizenship skills.

Life long learning, I learnt from a 6 Year old that by using www.Blackle.com rather that using Google I would save energy because the screen is black!

Eartfcast08 involved students from around the world talking about the Health of our planet and what they were doing to make a difference – I will make sure that we integrate earthcast09 in to our curriculum.”

I agree with John. It was a truly remarkable event. If you missed it the archives can be found here.

As I sit here writing this quick blog post, I am listening to Sheila and Rye Junior High school.

We already had the pleasure to listen to this incredible live song on earthday, we now have pupils giving us advice and talking about their initiatives to make a world a better place.

My morning started today at 6am, like any other day. The only change is that, instead of heading out of the door to go and accomplish my daily mission, I instantaneously connected to the people I was going to work with. They were already there. Jose Rodriguez (California, USA), Elderbob (Texas, USA) and Doug Symington (Victoria, Canada) had already started the unconference session when I got there. We chatted away for about 3 hours about issues that worry us and compared issues in the different countries we are in. Dennis Newnson (Germany) also joined us and it was a great talk.

Before I could notice the time was up – time online flies by.  Ramona was skyping me. Her students were ready to come online. Ok, off we go, we said. And we did! The students skyped in and explained what they have been doing. They explained why they are an Eco-school, and that they are a green flag school. Meanwhile, Joao and his students were also ready to interact. OK, A little bit of Portuguese this time.

After that, we still had some more time for unconference. We welcomed more people into the skype chat…until we realized it was time for Andreas’ session.

Oh My God!! It was my time to host the webcast. I encountered some problems at the beginning. My skype played a trick on me and froze. I took a deep breathe and restarted the application. Off we went again. Andreas’ session was highly professional. A full program in German Language. How cool is that?

Once again, the time just seemed to be running away. It was almost 1200 BST and I had to rush to the university. I kicked the webcast to Doug (thanks again for all the collaboration and support!) and left for a while.

But I couldn’t get my mind of it. I am back now and happy to be able to participate actively again. This is just a great experience. This is true collaboration. This is doing exactly what we preach – enabling the students to develop a voice ; educators and students working side by side, experts and different perspectives coming together in spite of time and space differences, and above all makeing this a meaningful and FUN experience for everyone.

what else can we ask for?

….back to Earthcast08 webcasthon written chat now!

Pontydysgu is proud to support the brilliant Earthday initiative.