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Sustaining Communities

August 22nd, 2009 by Graham Attwell

My two week break from blogging is over so it is back to normal service!

And with September fast approaching it is time to turn to the conference season. This year I have limited myself to just three conferences from the many goodies on offer. I will be at the Alt-C conference in Manchester, UK, from 8 to 10 September, at the Second World Congress on the Information Society in Crete from 16 – 18 September and at the European Conference on Education Research from the 28th to the 30th.

As ever we are hoping to organise a few fringe events and experiment with different media. Alt – C features the wonderful F-Alt (Fringe Alt for the uninitiated). This is a free unconferencing series of events, organised through a wiki. And for ECER in Vienna we are hoping to run a series of internet radio programmes under the Sounds of the Bazaar series (more details soon).

That is the ‘unofficial’ stuff. Now on to the official things – papers, symposia and the like. I have tried to develop a series of linked papers / contributions for these events (I am not sure whether it will work) around the themes of Web 2.0, digital identities and Personal Learning Environments.  For the first of the events, Alt C, I am making a presentation as part of the project team from the now finished Jisc Emerge support project. Here is an excerpt from our proposal entitled ‘Emerging practice and institutional change symposium: a user-centred, learning technology R&D support-community network’:

“Questions for institutions are to what extent are they comfortable with ceding certain amounts of control to individuals and to new communities?

For individuals the principal issues are to what extent do they subordinate their autonomy and self-direction to communities, how much do they subordinate and to which communities?

This symposium argues these questions from four perspectives:
– R&D programme support
– Community development
– Social networking applications and platforms
– Shifting centres of control

There will be four short presentations from each of these different perspectives. Each presentation will conclude with a series of open questions and will be followed by opportunities for questions and contributions from participants.  Participants will be invited to consider how these issues impact on their practice and the practice of their institutions.”

I am speaking about Social networking applications and platforms and in the next couple of days will post some thoughts on that theme in this blog. If you are interested in participating in the symposium but are not attending the conference we are planning to ustream the event and to invite questions through Twitter. Watch this space for full details.

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  2. […] Sustaining Communities @GrahamAttwell That is the ‘unofficial’ stuff. Now on to the official things – papers, symposia and the like. I have tried to develop a series of linked papers / contributions for these events (I am not sure whether it will work) around the themes of Web 2.0, digital identities and Personal Learning Environments.  For the first of the events, Alt C, I am making a presentation as part of the project team from the now finished Jisc Emerge support project. via pontydysgu.org […]

  3. […] Sustaining Communities @GrahamAttwell george | August 25, 2009 That is the ‘unofficial’ stuff. Now on to the official things – papers, symposia and the like. I have tried to develop a series of linked papers / contributions for these events (I am not sure whether it will work) around the themes of Web 2.0, digital identities and Personal Learning Environments.  For the first of the events, Alt C, I am making a presentation as part of the project team from the now finished Jisc Emerge support project. via pontydysgu.org […]

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