Great video by Michal Wesch

Photo: Yeweni

As promised a new podcast in our Sounds of the Bazaar series. Dr Jile and Mr. Tian from the Institute of Vocational and Adult Education in Bejing dropped in yesterday to talk about technology enhanced learning.

I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get them in front of the microphone. And it is truly an interesting talk. Many thanks to both of them,

Intro and extro music New Generation by  ‘Souled Out‘

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I had a fascinating meeting with two representatives of a Bejing school district last night. They are in Bremen as part of a European programme which including other things is developing a programme for the Continuing Professional Development of vocational teachers in the city.
They came to visit us to discuss e-learning and how the use of new technologies might help in their project.
The big issue that emerged was that of the scale of they challenge they face. Most of the teachers in vocational schools have received no pedagogic training at all, gong straight from university to become a teacher. Because of pressures on the system, the CPD programme is being organised out of school hoursd. Attendance is voluntary. And the teachers are keen. A recent seminar held on a Sunday attracted more than 800 particpants! The biggest issue is that there are not enough resources to organise a tradtional CPD programme. There are simply too many teachers who want to participate and not enough trainers. And that is when we started thinking about Massively Open On-line Courses (MOOCs). The infrastructure and access to networks and computers is relatively good in Bejing. Teachers are open to new ideas. Could we organise a programme that combined face to face events with on-line provision open to all who wished to attend? How could support be organised? What kind of platforms and tools would be required?
I started out as a sceptic about MOOCs but the meeting last night has changed my thinking.
If you are interested in hearing more about the project, we recorded a quick podcast with the Chinese colleagues and we will try to get this online in the next couple of days.

Lsy week I helped organise the on-line conference on the training of teachers and trainers. And thanks to hard work from Dirk Stieglitz and cristina Costa the proceedings of the conference are now all on line on the Network of Trainers in Europe website. It is well worth checking out the web site and especially looking at the online exhibition which accompanied the conference.

We have been doing an online surevy to help in the evaluation of the conference and I will post some of the results this weekend.

In the meantime, if you missed the conference here is your second chance to see what happened.

5 November 2008

Theme: The changing role of trainers in learning

Morning sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Professor Alan Brown, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick
  • Employees supporting the learning, training and development of other employees while working in groups: examples drawn from aerospace, health and accountancy (mp3, ppt, paper)

• George Roberts, Oxford Brooks University, UK
  • Education, training and employment (mp3, ppt)

• Barry Nyhan, Ireland
  • Lifelong learning and the role of trainers (mp3, ppt, paper)
• Lorna Unwin, Professor Alan Felstead and Nick Jewson, Professor Alison Fuller
  • Can anyone be a trainer?: towards a more embedded role for vocational trainers (ppt)
    

Theme: Support for the professional development of trainers

Afternoon sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Seija Mahlamäki-Kultanen and Anita Eskola-Kronqvist, HAMK, Finland
  • New Innovations into trainers’ training: Documenting and analyzing work processes with digital photos (mp3, ppt)

• Prof. Eduardo Figueira, University of Évora Portugal
  
  • Developing competence for trainers in Portugal (mp3, ppt)

• Simone Kirpal, University f Bremen, Germany
  • The Eurotrainer network survey (mp3, ppt)

• Eileen Luebcke, Pontydysgu, Germany
  
  • A framework for continuing professional development of trainers (mp3, ppt)

• Summary of the first day By Graham Attwell (mp3)

6 November 2008

Theme: E-learning for trainers

Morning sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Cristina Costa, University of Salford / Pontydysgu, UK
  • Using social software tools for supporting the online training of trainers (mp3, ppt)

• Doris Beer, Lohberger Unternehmerinnenzentrum e.V., Germany
  
  • e-learning for medical healthcare assisstants in Germany (mp3, ppt)

• John Pallister, Wolsingham School, UK
  • The ePortfolio process, supporting the Trainer and Training (mp3, ppt)

• Vance Stevens, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi
  • Teacher professional development in groups, communities, and networks (mp3, ppt)

Afternoon sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Carla Arena & Mary Hillis, USA and Japan
  • Professional Development in Online Circles of Learning (mp3, ppt, wiki)

• Anne Fox, CV2, Denmark
  • VITAE – introducing 21st century skills through mentoring (mp3, ppt)

• Regina Lamscheck Nielsen, DEL, Denmark
  
  • TrainerGuide – made in Denmark (mp3, ppt)

• Linda Castañeda, University of Murcia, Spain
  
  • On-line Collaboration to teach and learn with each other (mp3, ppt, wiki)

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Last weeks Emerging Mondays seminar was on the topic of MOOCs and Open Course Models. The speaker was Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island.

Dave spoke about his experiences, so far, of the CCK MOOC on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge, the technological platforms being used to support participants, the tensions that exist within the course design and the peer support models that are being embraced.  Dave’s introduction led to a wide ranging discussion including the nature and furture of courses and communities, issues of scale, how to support learners, open accreditation and the future of open education – and …Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland!

If you missed the session – or would like to hear it again – we are providing you with three different versions. You can watch a replay of the event in Elluminate. This provides you with access to the sidebar chat discussion as well as to the audio.

Or – if you are short of time you can listen to an MP3 podcast of Dave’s introduction.

Or you can listen to the full session inline or on your MP3 player.

This is the link to the Elluminate version.

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Some time ago I wrote a post entitled ‘Hairdressing, Serious Games and Learning‘. It was not because I knew anything about it but because I was live blogging a conference presentation. Frederic Aunis who works for L’Oriel presented a game they had developed for teaching business skills to hairdressers. t was a good presnentation and a good game. The problem is that he game is owned by L’Oriel and access is retsricted to those with a  contract to the company.

The post is – somehwat embrarrsingly, one of the most popular I have ever written. Yet, I am afraid, it gives no help to those who are hitting it – presumably becauase they are searching for games to help them in teaching hairdressers.

I don’t know a lot about hairdressing but I have gleamed a little from research colleagues at the University of Warwick. Hairdressng is a very polular vocational training course. In part it is a course chosen by those who do not know what to do. But in part it is because people envisage owning and running their own business. The sad factor is most do not make it and whilst hairdressing businesses can be very profitable the reality fo rmany emloyees is lng hours and low pay (OK – if you don’t agree please feel free ot comment!). And whilst most trainees take well to the practical elements of the course, they struggle more with the theort – especially science – and have little interest in learninga bout how to run a business.

Hence the idea of a game. And according to Frederic it works. But, back to the problem. We need open source games which can be used by all. I am not a hairdresser or a games designer. But I know a little about both. The European Lifelng Learning programme is now on call. Is there anyone interested in a project to design an open souce game for teaching hairdrssers about running a business. I am looking for hairdressers, hairdressing teachers and trainers and educational games deisgners. Just leave a comment or email me if you would be interested in such a project.

The last two days I have been taking part of the 1^st Network Trainers in Europe open online conference.

It was quite interesting at different levels. It was an experienced different from the others I have been accustomed to. Still as enriching as the other, as if not more, for the diversity of people I was able to interact with.

I was also part of the team behind the conference, and helped organize it – keeping in close contact with all parties involved: participants, speakers and organizers it’s hard work, but also a lot of fun when you work as a coherent team.

It’s incredible how much has to be done beforehand to put an event of this dimension together. But it is equally amazing what a great experience it can also be, even if stress sometimes takes over. The backstage team much be recognized for the amazing supportive work. Thanks Dirk, Joe and Graham for all the hard work, and all the support in the back channel!

This was a conference opened to everyone, but we knew that our main target audience would be people whose familiarity with technology was not as quite advanced as in the groups and communities some of us move about. Most of them use only a working email and rarely ever consider the web for anything else. That seems to do the trick for them so far, as trainers, mentors and/or policy makers. However, but were (are) also up to trying something else, to see the landscape from another perspective. Isn’t that the greatest driver of learning: to want to?  Willing is what it takes to get us started.

Technology however often plays the trick on us. There were people who struggled to get into the conference room: institutional firewalls, computers that crashed, names with non-standard characters that the system peremptorily refused to accept, people who were continuously directed to the sandbox room, despite the fact they were clicking on the right link… we got a bit of everything! But in the end, through different back channels and with the effort of a silent team, who was working hard in the background, most participants were able to succeed and join us for two days of remote live interaction.

Contemporaneous issues were raised and well represented in practical examples. The educational concerns and wishes are common across countries: how do we engage people to learn differently? How do we innovate and comply with the assessment and outcome “rules”? How can we value, and recognise, work-based learning? How little impact informal learning still has in official recognition of skills and competences. How to change that? What should be the role of the trainer in the 21^st century?…. Many thoughts were added to these questions and many others that arose from the presentations.

The interactions increased as the technology became less of a stranger. The written chat was quite powerful in that sense, and some people were even brave enough to communicate with the speakers and the rest of the audience with audio. By the last two presentations, we had completely forgotten the formalities of the traditional question- answer format and were bouncing questions and comments at each other with enthusiasm. It became a big conversation. Wewent global right there and then, and all of a sudden all barrier (space, time, technology glitches, etc) seemed to ceasse. We were just taking part in a great conversation.

Above all we were just doing what the presenters had inspired us to do: to share, communicate and work together.

I think we can say we all learned something and we all had a bit of fun. It was a meaningful opportunity to power the connection and encourage people to come together, to consider a future which some of us are already part of.

As I had planned to quote in my last two slides, and which I missed to present because the conversation took us in different routes (and I am glad it was so):

We are standing at the threshold of a new era in learning approaches and itineraries where the greatest novelty of ICT resides in the full use of the C: C for community, communication and care. (Prof. Roberto Carneiro during Online Educa 2007)

And that’s the situation some have already embraced. It is also the future others are looking forward to making into their own present reality. Change takes time, but I have hope we will get there. We just need to want to and to be able to show we care through meaningful, personalized communication inside the community.

So a final thought:

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. (by William Gibson)*

* On the day of the conference professor Alan Brown sent me a paper he wrote. Coincidently he had finished his thoughts with this same sentence – the sentence I had planned to finish my slides with too. Maybe the future is getting more even than we think.

My slides here (recording coming soon)

I love this photo. From the excellent LabourStart Web site.

“Robert Day, a branch secretary with the British public sector PCS in Birmingham, is the winner of the first-ever Labour Photo of the Year competition organized by LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement.

Day’s photo — entitled ‘Trade Unions are Fun!’ — shows trade unionists marching through Birmingham, led by banners and drummers, on 24 April 2008. Here it is:

We have just finished the two day online Conference on the training of teachers and trainers organised by the Networork for the Training of Traners in Europe and Evolve.

It was – at least I felt – an inspiring event. Although I don’t have accurate figures I guess at least 70 people attended at some art of the conference – including particpants from more than 20 countries. Despite the usual technical annoyances, the technology never got in the way of the exchange of ideas. In fact, rather the reverse. The discussion was more interactive and reflective than in most face to face events I have attended. We had 15 presentation in four two hour sessions – allowing about 15 minutes presentation and 15 minutes discussion for each presentater. As we had hoped, bringing together researchers and practitioners in the training of teachers and trainers and e-learning practitioners allowed for a productive interchange of ideas and practice.

We will be provding access to the outcomes of the confernece in a variety of different media over the next seven days. Here are just a few of my impressions about the themes of the discussions.

One theme was the increasing prevalence of work based learning. This is expecially so as the divide between initial training and continuing training becomes blurred. As learning becomes embedded in work processes then it becomes increasingly bound by context. Technology can help greatly in capturing learnng from practice in the context it occurs. But this does not really fit with the idea of predeterminded outcomes specified in qualifications. Furthermore the competences required today are changing with a focus on collaboration, working in teams and the ability to support others in their learning and work. Two different approaches were put forward to deal with this. One was to support more community based learning with facilitalors to support enquiry based learning. Another was to move from seeing learning as primarily a question of individual qualification to see it as an integral aspect of innovation. An inovation approach would lead to a focus on learning rich work.

The role of teachers and trainers is also changing with a move from didactic teaching to supporting learners especially in scaffolding learning and developing learning pathways. In many ways we are all beoming teachers and learners. The best teachers, it was said, are learners. It is no longer possible to merely absorb a body of knowledge, especially given increasing job flexibility. But how much employees need to acquire basic competences before being able to learn from work and what those competences are was an issue around which there was no agreement.

Given that more and more people are having responsibility for supporting the learnering of others, the issue of how they are supported in that role becomes an issue. Traditional training the trainers courses are not enough. Rather there is a switch to encouraging peer group support and facilitating the development of communities of pracice. The many web 2.0 tools are valuable in this repect. However, many teachers and trainers are not confident in the use of such tools. There are different approaches to how to deal with this, ranging from targeted courses, the provision of interactive web based resources and fostering self directed learning networks. For all this motivation, the willingness to invest time and effort and above all self-reflection are critical. There is an issue about in whose time learning should take place and to what extent we should be personally reposnsible for our learning and employability. Web 2.0 tools can allow us to link self directed and networked learning to practice. Especially important are the wide range of open learning opportunties being developed through the web.

Three buzzwords emerged from the conference – sharing, collaboration and openess.

Sorry for all I have missed. But please feel free to comment below and add to what I have said – or correct me if I misrepresented what people said.

It was the first day of the on-line conference on the Training of Trainers, sponsored by the Network to Support Trainers in Europe and Evolve.

Not bad. Particpation in the different sessions varied between 25 and 45 people. This compares to the 110 who have registered for the conference which is about in line with other free and open online events I have organised. People either choose whch session interests them most or work around various meetings and other work activites. And of course, some people register but then find something else has come up.

We had some technical problems with firewalls but that is par for the course. A few people got lost in the sandbox but we managed to dig them out and get them to the right place.

We had the usual problems with sound levels and microphones not working. But – once more as usual – these settled down as the day went on. And – most interestingly for me – the techncial barriers seemed no worse with the conference particpants who were for the main part researchers in education and training – and not educational technologists – thean we have had with techy online conferences in the past.

The presentations were good and the discussion even better. I would go as far as to say the discussion was better than at many face ot face conferences I have been to. Once again the use of the back channel provoked lively exchange.

We are presently editing the audio and creating slidecastsso that the conference proceedings will become Open Educational Resources.

So my conclusions – online and open learning using video conferecing is mainsteaming. Lets build on it!!