I am truly appalled at the digital economy bill now being rushed through the UK parliament.
The bill includes a three strikes rule to cut off internet access for alleged file sharers – which according the Guardian newspaper “could suspend the broadband connections used by anybody accused of file sharing three times whether or not they are convicted of copyright infringement.”
The Guardian also reports that “the notorious Clause 17 – which has now had its scope diminished – had proposed to give the secretary of state the power to update copyright law without parliamentary assent.”
They go on to say “the Liberal Democrats caused uproar when they proposed an amendment to the bill apparently aimed at bringing more judicial oversight into the system – but that critics could end up shutting down major websites such as YouTube.”
“The change – which gives the high court the power to shut down entire websites if they host “substantial” amounts of copyright infringing material – came in for strong criticism, particularly after it emerged that the language used was identical to a proposal by British music industry body the BPI.”
In a blog entitled “The Day Democracy Died“, Lilian Edwards, a specialist in online law said:
This is simply disgraceful. It is law making by industry, for industry, on the nod of all three major political parties (and against the grassroots sentiment of at least one of them). This is no longer just about copyright, or downloading, or even freedom of speeech and due process. It is about democracy, and whether this country is run by MPs or by lobbyists and Big Capital. It is a day when as a democrat, and a lawyer, (and not as a “copyright activist” as one commenter wrongly called me – I believe in copyright, I just don’t believe in destroying the legal system to enforce it) ) I am deeply , deeply disappointed.
This law raises series issues for education. In a paper entitled “What is the significance of Open Source Software for the education and training community?” and written in 2005 (I think) i said the issue of sharing raises important social issues over ownership and content. I quoted Dai Griffith who addressed some of these issues at the open session of the June 2004 SIGOSSEE project meeting in Limerick on Open Source software in education.
He argued that the Web has changed the technology for publishing and that the publishing industry and legal framework is responding by seeking to reinforce the existing structures. The way they are doing this is by promoting the metaphor of ideas as property as ‘Intellectual property’. This metaphor says:
- An idea is an object
- Copyright is property
- Reuse of an idea is theft
Dai Griffiths rejected this metaphor. He asked how do you know if someone “steals” your copyright materials? Copyright infringement is illegal, he said, but it is not theft, pointing out there was art, music and literature before copyright. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted by the state. It is important, but it is not an inalienable right.
Copyright is a body of inconsistent, ad-hoc arrangements to regulate markets. Dai Griffiths argued that copyright should benefit the citizen, not the author or the publisher. He quoted the US House of Representatives report on the Berne Convention:
“The constitutional purpose of copyright is to facilitate the flow of ideas in the interest of learning.”… The primary objective of our copyright laws is not to reward the author, but rather to secure for the public the benefits from the creations of authors”
(Implementation Act of 1988, cited in LR Patterson & SW Lindberg, The Nature of Copyright 1991).
I would argue that the primary objective of the digital economy bill is not to reward the author, nor to secure for the public the benefits from the creations of authors, but to secure the interests of an outdated, self seeking and degenerate industry. They are not interested in music, they are not interested in film, they are not interested in literature, the are not interested in art, they are not interested in learning, they only care for their profits. This bill has nothing to do with the digital economy – it is about reinforcing copyright. Shame on our politicians for supporting them.
The second in my ‘Rethinking’ series of blog posts. This one – Rethinking e-portfolios’ is the notes for a forthcoming book chapter which I will post on the Wales wide Web when completed..
Several years ago, e-portfolios were the vogue in e-learning research and development circles. Yet today little is heard of them. Why? This is not an unimportant question. One of the failures of the e-learnng community is our tendency to move from one fad to the next, without ever properly examining what worked, what did not, and the reasons for it.
First of all it is important to note that there was never a single understanding or approach to the development and purpose of an e-Portfolio. This can largely due be ascribed to different didactic and pedagogic approaches to e-Portfolio development and use. Some time ago I wrote that “it is possible to distinguish between three broad approaches: the use of e-Portfolios as an assessment tool, the use of e-Portfolios as a tool for professional or career development planning (CDP), and a wider understanding of e-Portfolios as a tool for active learning.”
In a paper presented at the e-Portfolio conference in Cambridge in 2005 (Attwell, 2005), I attempted to distinguish between the different process in e-Portfolio development and then examined the issue of ownership for each of these processes.
The diagramme reveals not only ownership issues, but possibly contradictory purposes for an e-Portfolio. Is an e-Portfolio intended as a space for learners to record all their learning – that which takes place in the home or in the workplace as well as in a course environment or is it a place or responding to prescribed outcomes for a course or learning programme? How much should a e-Portfolio be considered a tool for assessment and how much for reflection on learning? Can tone environment encompass all of these functions?
These are essentially pedagogic issues. But, as always, they are reflected in e-learning technologies and applications. I worked for a whole on a project aiming to ‘repurpose the OSPI e-portfolio (later merged into Sakai) for use in adult education in the UK. It was almost impossible. The pedagogic use of the e-Portfolio, essentially o report against course outcomes – was hard coded into the software.
Lets look at another, and contrasting, e-Portfolio application, ELGG. Although now used as a social networking platform, in its original incarnation ELGG stared out as a social e-portfolio, originating in research undertaken by Dave Tosh on an e-portfolio project. ELGG essentially provided for students to blog within a social network with fine grained and easy to use access controls. All well and good: students were not restricted to course outcomes in their learning focus. But when it came to report on learning as part of any assessment process, ELGG could do little. There was an attempt to develop a ‘reporting’ plug in tool but that offered little more than the ability to favourite selected posts and accumulate them in one view.
Mahara is another popular open source ePortfolio tool. I have not actively played with Maraha for two years. Although still built around a blogging platform, Mahara incorporated a series of reporting tools, to allow students to present achievements. But it also was predicated on a (university) course and subject structure.
Early thinking around e-Portfolios failed to take into account the importance of feedback – or rather saw feedback as predominately as coming from teachers. The advent of social networking applications showed the power of the internet for what are now being called personal Learning networks, in other words to develop personal networks to share learning and share feedback. An application which merely allowed e-learners to develop their own records of learning, even if they could generate presentations, was clearly not enough.
But even if e-portfolios could be developed with social networking functionality, the tendency for institutionally based learning to regard the class group as the natural network, limited their use in practice. Furthermore the tendency, at least in the school sector, of limited network access in the mistaken name of e-safety once more limited the wider development of ‘social e-Portfolios.”
But perhaps the biggest problem has been around the issue of reflection. Champions have lauded e-portfolios as a natural tools to facilitate reflection on learning. Helen Barrett (2004) says an “electronic portfolio is a reflective tool that demonstrates growth over time.” Yet are e-Portfolios effective in promoting reflection? And is it possible to introduce a reflective tool in an educations system that values the passing of exams through individual assessment over all else? Merely providing spaces for learners to record their learning, albeit in a discursive style does not automatically guarantee reflection. It may be that reflection involves discourse and tools for recording outcomes offer little in this regard.
I have been working for the last three years on developing a reflective e-Portfolio for a careers service based din the UK. The idea is to provide students an opportunity to research different career options and reflect on their preferences, desired choices and outcomes.
We looked very hard at existing opens source e-portfolios as the basis for the project, nut could not find any that met our needs. We eventually decided to develop an e-Portfolio based on WordPress – which we named Freefolio.
At a technical level Freefolio was part hack and part the development of a plug in. Technical developments included:
Much of this has been overtaken by subsequent releases of WordPress multi user and more recently Buddypress. But at the time Freefolio was good. However it did not work in practice. Why? There were two reasons I think. Firstly, the e-Portfolio was only being used for careers lessons in school and that forms too little a part of the curriculum to build a critical mass of familiarity with users. And secondly, it was just too complex for many users. The split between the front end and the back end of WordPress confused users. The pedagogic purpose, as opposed to the functional use was too far apart. Why press on something called ‘new post’ to write about your career choices.
And, despite our attempts to allow users to select different templates, we had constant feedback that there was not enough ease of customisation in the appearance of the e-Portfolio.
In phase two of the project we developed a completely different approach. Rather than produce an overarching e-portfolip, we have developed a series of careers ‘games; to be accessed through the Careers company web site. Each of the six or so games, or mini applications we have developed so far encourages users to reflect on different aspects of their careers choices. Users are encouraged to rate different careers and to return later to review their choices. The site is yet to be rolled out but initial evaluations are promising.
I think there are lessons to be learnt from this. Small applications that encourage users to think are far better than comprehensive e-portfolios applications which try to do everything.
Interestingly, this view seems to have concur with that of CETIS. Simon Grant points out: “The concept of the personal learning environment could helpfully be more related to the e-portfolio (e-p), as both can help informal learning of skills, competence, etc., whether these abilities are formally defined or not.”
I would agree: I have previously seen both as related on a continuum, with differing foci but similar underpinning ideas. However I have always tended to view Personal Learning Environments as a pedagogic capproach, rather than an application. Despite this, there have been attempts to ‘build a PLE’. In that respect (and in relation to rethinking e-Portfolios) Scott Wilson’s views are interesting. Simon Grant says: “As Scott Wilson pointed out, it may be that the PLE concept overreached itself. Even to conceive of “a” system that supports personal learning in general is hazardous, as it invites people to design a “big” system in their own mind. Inevitably, such a “big” system is impractical, and the work on PLEs that was done between, say, 2000 and 2005 has now been taken forward in different ways — Scott’s work on widgets is a good example of enabling tools with a more limited scope, but which can be joined together as needed.”
Simon Grant goes on to say the ““thin portfolio” concept (borrowing from the prior “personal information aggregation and distribution service” concept) represents the idea that you don’t need that portfolio information in one server; but that it is very helpful to have one place where one can access all “your” information, and set permissions for others to view it. This concept is only beginning to be implemented.”
This is similar to the Mash Up Personal Learning Environment, being promoted in a number of European projects. Indeed a forthcoming paper by Fridolin Wild reports on research looking at the value of light weight widgets for promoting reflection that can be embedded in existing e-learning programmes. This is an interesting idea in suggesting that tools for developing an e-Portfolio )or for that matter, a PLE can be embedded in learning activities. This approach does not need to be restricted to formal school or university based learning courses. Widgets could easily be embedded in work based software (and work flow software) and our initial investigations of Work Oriented Personal Learning Environments (WOMBLES) has shown the potential of mobile devices for capturing informal and work based learning.
Of course, one of the big developments in software since the early e-Portfolio days has been the rise of web 2.0, social software and more recently cloud computing. There seems little point in us spending time and effort developing applications for students to share powerpoint presentations when we already have the admirable slideshare application. And for bookmarks, little can compete with Diigo. Most of these applications allow embedding so all work can be displayed in one place. Of course there is an issue as to the longevity of data on such sites (but then, we have the same issue with institutional e-Portfolios and I would always recommend that students retain a local copy of their work). Of course, not all students are confident in the use of such tools: a series of recent studies have blown apart the Digital Native (see for example Hargittai, E. (2010). Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”. Sociological Inquiry. 80(1):92-113). And some commercial services may be more suitable than other for developing an e-Portfolio: Facebook has in my view limitations! But, somewhat ironically, cloud computing may be moving us nearer to Helen Barrett’s idea of an e-Portfolio. John Morrison recently gave a presentation (downloadable here) based on his study of ‘what aspects of identity as learners and understandings of ways to learn are shown by students who have been through a program using course-based networked learning?’ In discussing technology he looked at University as opposed to personally acquired, standalone as opposed to networked and Explored as opposed to ongoing use.
He found that students:
Did not rush to use new technology
Used face-to-face rather than technology, particularly in early brainstorming phases of a project
Tried out software and rejected that which was not meeting a need
Used a piece of software until another emerged which was better
Restrained the amount of software they used regularly to relatively few programs
Certain technologies were ignored and don’t appear to have been tried out by the students
Students used a piece of software until another emerged which was better which John equates with change. Students restrained the amount of software they used regularly to relatively few programs which he equates with conservatism
Whilst students were previously heavy users of Facebook, they were now abandoning it. And whilst there was little previous use of Google docs, his latest survey suggested that this cloud application was now being heavily used. This is important in that one of the more strange aspects of previous e0Portolio development has been the requirement for most students to upload attached files, produced in an off line work processor, to the e-Portfolio and present as a file attachment. But if students (no doubt partly driven by costs savings) are using online software for their written work, this may make it much easier to develop online e-portfolios.
John concluded that :this cohort lived through substantial technological change. They simplified and rationalized their learning tools. They rejected what was not functional, university technology and some self-acquired tools. They operate from an Acquisition model of learning.” He concluded that “Students can pick up and understand new ways to learn from networks. BUT… they generally don’t. They pick up what is intended.” (It is also well worth reading the discussion board around John’s presentation – - although you will need to be logged in to the Elesig Ning site).
So – the e-Portfolio may have a new life. But what particularly interests me us the interplay between pedagogic ideas and applications and software opportunities and developments in providing that new potential life. And of course, we still have to solve that issue of control and ownership. And as John says, students pick up what is intended. If we continue to adhere to an acquisition model of learning, it will be hard to persuade students to develop reflective e-Portfolios. We should continue to rethink e-Portfolios through a widget based approach. But we have also to continue to rethink our models of education and learning.
I think this is big news although it has received little press attention. According to Information World Review, Click Use, the license that the UK government has used to allow reuse of government data is to be replaced by a Creative Commons type license. Information World Review quotes Jo Ellis of OPSI as saying: “We have drafted a simple and enabling set of terms and conditions for the site which means that data available through data.gov.uk will be re-usable both commercially and non-commercially.”
“These terms and conditions have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.”
This move follows a slow opening up of government data with the increasing provision of tools to allow users to easily create mash ups. Particularly interesting is Directgov Innovate site which says:
We developed our platform to enable conversation with the developer community around innovative use of digital technologies. In addition to our blog we ask people to submit examples of innovative citizen focused apps or ideas for apps that could be developed using government data or that demonstrate innovative use of technologies.
The site gives access to tools to easily create widgets to query local government data, for instance providing access to job vacancies or school term dates.
Similarly, the UK data gov site says:
Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt and others, government is opening up data for reuse. This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data and is under constant development. We want to work with you to make it better.
We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.
Like Directgov, the site allows users to contribute both ideas and apps to the site.
All this augers well. I have been working on developing mash up applications for careers guidance and counselling and in particular for using Labour Market Information. All to often, the major barrier is the lack of available data, license restrictions and the lack of APis to query data. At last attitudes seem to be changing.
Through the Mature project I have been invited to submit a proposal for a lecture or workshop for the JTEL Summer School to be held in Ohrid in June. The JTEL summer schools, the publicity claims, usually attract about 80 researchers, providing an exciting forum for cross-disciplinary dialogue, fostering new research collaborations and partnerships, and an opportunity for the next generation of TEL researchers to gain insight from leading experts in the field.
The summer school is being organised by the Stellar network and proposals were asked to explain how they contribute to the network’s three Grand Challenges:
So here’s my proposal. I enjoyed writing it and if anyone else is interested in us running such a workshop juts get in touch.
Short description
The workshop will focus on the use of internet radio in education.
1) An exploration of the use of media (and particularly internet radio and television) for learning and shared knowledge developmentThis will include looking at issues such as:
a) The appropriation of media
b) The change from passive media to interactive Web 2.0 supported media and the changing distinctions between broadcaster/program planner and listener/consumer.
c) How media such as radio can support the development of online communities
d) The use of media to bridge contexts and provide spaces for exploration and shared meaning making.
2) A practical hands on session on how to plan develop and broadcast live internet media. This will include storyboarding, interviewing, finding Creative Commons licensed music, making jingles, mixing and post processing, directing and producing and using the technology for live broadcasts.
3) The third session is planned to take place in a lunchtime or evening session. This will be a live 45 minute to one hour broadcast “Sounds of the Bazaar – Live from Ohrid”. It is hoped to involve all summer school participants in the broadcast. The broadcast will be publicised in advance through iTunes, Facebook, Twitter and other social software platforms. It is also intended to use the boradcast to link to other researchers in TEL from around the world not able to be at the summer school. The programme will be recorded and made available through the Summer School web site, the Mature project web site, the Pontydysgu web site and through iTunes.
Contribution to the Grand Challenges agenda
The workshop is primarily designed to contribute to the Grand Challenge of Contextualising virtual learning environments and instrumentalising learning contexts.
Live internet radio provides both a shared context and space for learning, with universal reach outside of institutional or national boundaries, whilst at the same time allowing individual to collectively contribute to the development of shared artefacts, which in themselves can become part of the repertoire of a community of practice. Radio also offers a means of actively engaging learners in a community and through appropriation of what was a push (or broadcast) media, through merging with Web 2.0 tools and standards allows community participation and self expression.
I think the emphasis with careers guidance is often put in the wrong place, on the word career rather than guidance. This means that much of careers guidance is based upon the actual career a student may have rather than guiding the student as they take steps which will eventually leading to their end career. Often the major problem with this is that students look back and realise they closed doors and opportunities for themselves that they had no idea they were closing and make decisions without a thorough knowledge of where their choices will take them.
This is particularly important as the majority of students are not sure of what particular job they would like to end up in and therefore when making decisions the optimum choice keeps options as wide open as possible. It is also at key choice or transition points that considering career options becomes important. Therefore career and education guidance should be focused on these key times. Within the English education systems these fall at the end of Year 9 for GCSE choices, the end of Year 11 for Post 16 options and the end of Year 13 when students reach the age of 18.
I find much of current guidance to be based on students looking at potential careers. My problem with this system is that from my experience students see their choices from the point of view of their current surroundings so through subject-based perspectives and only within the parameters of the decisions they are currently making. Such specific guidance seems to miss the focus of students towards careers and provide them with abstract information they will struggle to relate to their situation within a school environment.
However currently these conclusions are drawn from the experiences and opinions of myself and the people around me and I hope to do some wider work work on establishing if this really is the case.
The first of a new series of articles on rethinking education. This one – on rethinking schools – is a quick review of an excellent article by Ivan Illich, published in The New York Review of Books, Volume 15in 1971, and entitled ‘A Special supplement: Education without School: How it Can Be Done‘. Illich, best known for his groundbreaking book, Deschooling Society, remains as relevant today as he was 40 years ago. And in many ways he anticipated the use of computers for social networking and collaborative learning.Many thanks to Barry Nyhan for sending me the link to the article.
Illich starts the article by contrasting the function of school with how people really learn.
In school registered students submit to certified teachers in order to obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient resources—money, time, or buildings—for their mutual frustration.
Such criticism leads many people to ask whether it is possible to conceive of a different style of learning. The same people, paradoxically, when pressed to specify how they acquired what they know and value, will readily admit that they learned it more often outside than inside school. Their knowledge of facts, their understanding of life and work came to them from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or while reading, from examples of peers or the challenge of a street encounter. Or they may have learned what they know through the apprenticeship ritual for admission to a street gang or the initiation to a hospital, newspaper city room, plumber’s shop, or insurance office. The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which “makes” people learn; rather it is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his environment. To foster this style, attitudes toward growing up, the tools available for learning, and the quality and structure of daily life will have to change concurrently.
illich saw the schooling system as a product of consumer society.
School, ….. is the major component of the system of consumer production which is becoming more complex and specialized and bureaucratized. Schooling is necessary to produce the habits and expectations of the managed consumer society. Inevitably it produces institutional dependence and ranking in spite of any effort by the teacher to teach the contrary. It is an illusion that schools are only a dependent variable, an illusion which, moreover, provides them, the reproductive organs of a consumer society, with their immunity.
In contrast to the consumer driven schooling system Illich proposed developing learning networks.
I believe that no more than four—possibly even three—distinct “channels” or learning exchanges could contain all the resources needed for real learning. The child grows up in a world of things, surrounded by people who serve as models for skills and values. He finds peers who challenge him to argue, to compete, to cooperate, and to understand; and if the child is lucky, he is exposed to confrontation or criticism by an experienced elder who really cares. Things, models, peers, and elders are four resources each of which requires a different type of arrangement to ensure that everybody has ample access to them.
I will use the word “network” to designate specific ways to provide access to each of four sets of resources. …. What are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching.
Illich was particularly concerned over open access to educational resources. her put forward four different approaches for enabling access.
1.) Reference Services to Educational Objects—which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these things can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and showrooms like museums and theaters; others can be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off-hours.
2.) Skill Exchanges—which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills, and the addresses at which they can be reached.
3.) Peer Matching—a communication network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.
4.) Reference Services to Educators-at-large—who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, para-professionals, and free-lancers, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators, as we will see, could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients.
Illich was concerned that modern industrial design was preventing access to the world of ‘things’ or ‘educational objects’ which are critical for learning.
Industrial design creates a world of things that resist insight into their nature, and schools shut the learner out of the world of things in their meaningful setting……At the same time, educational materials have been monopolized by school. Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators, and their cost has been inflated by forcing them to stimulate either environments or teachers.
Skill exchanges would be central to networked learning in a deschooled society and despite the uses of new technology face to face communication would remain important.
A “skill model” is a person who possesses a skill and is willing to demonstrate its practice. A demonstration of this kind is frequently a necessary resource for a potential learner. Modern inventions permit us to incorporate demonstration into tape, film, or chart; yet one would hope personal demonstration will remain in wide demand, especially in communication skills.
The schooling system was leading to a skills scarcity.
What makes skills scarce on the present educational market is the institutional requirement that those who can demonstrate them may not do so unless they are given public trust, through a certificate. We insist that those who help others acquire a skill should also know how to diagnose learning difficulties and be able to motivate people to aspire to learn skills. In short, we demand that they be pedagogues. People who can demonstrate skills will be plentiful as soon as we learn to recognize them outside the teaching profession.
Illich put forward the idea of a ‘skills bank’ for exchanging tecahing and learning.
Each citizen would be given a basic credit with which to acquire fundamental skills. Beyond that minimum, further credits would go to those who earn them by teaching, whether they serve as models in organized skill centers or do so privately at home or on the playground. Only those who have taught others for an equivalent amount of time would have a claim on the time of more advanced teachers. An entirely new elite would be promoted, an elite of those who earn their education by sharing it.
As well as access to skills models peer learning would lie at the centre of a new learning society, with computers allowing peer matching.
The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he seeks a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who have inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.
In its most rudimentary form, communication between client and computer could be done by return mail. In big cities, typewriter terminals could provide instantaneous responses. The only way to retrieve a name and address from the computer would be to list an activity for which a peer is sought. People using the system would become known only to their potential peers.
A complement to the computer could be a network of bulletin boards and classified newspaper ads, listing the activities for which the computer could not produce a match. No names would have to be given. Interested readers would then introduce their names into the system.
School buildings would become neighbourhood learning centres.
One way to provide for their continued use would be to give over the space to people from the neighborhood. Each could state what he would do in the classroom and when—and a bulletin board would bring the available programs to the attention of the inquirers. Access to “class” would be free—or purchased with educational vouchers. …..The same approach could be taken toward higher education. Students could be furnished with educational vouchers which entitle them for ten hours yearly private consultation with the teacher of their choice—and, for the rest of their learning, depend on the library, the peer-matching network, and apprenticeships.
Whilst traditional teachers would no longer be required there would be need for a new ‘professional educators.’
Parents need guidance in guiding their children on the road that leads to responsible educational independence. Learners need experienced leadership when they encounter rough terrain. These two needs are quite distinct: the first is a need for pedagogy, the second for intellectual leadership in all other fields of knowledge. The first calls for knowledge of human learning and of educational resources, the second for wisdom based on experience in any kind of exploration. Both kinds of experience are indispensable for effective educational endeavor. Schools package these functions into one role—and render the independent exercise of any of them if not disreputable at least suspect.
Finally, students would develop individual learning pathways through networked learning.
If the networks I have described can emerge, the educational path of each student would be his own to follow, and only in retrospect would it take on the features of a recognizable program. The wise student would periodically seek professional advice: assistance to set a new goal, insight into difficulties encountered, choice between possible methods. Even now, most persons would admit that the important services their teachers have rendered them are such advice or counsel, given at a chance meeting or in a tutorial.
I’ve written a lot recently about the potential of the use of mobile devices in the workplace. Last summer, together with my colleagues John Cook and Andrew Ravenscroft, we coined the term Work Oriented Mobile learning Environment or WoMbLE to try to explain what we were trying to create. And we have written about the design idea and about work based learning. But it seems hard to people to ‘get it’. Can you give us some concrete examples, they ask. We need some use cases, they say. As did the reviewer of a recent paper I submitted for the International Journal of Mobile Learning who was concerned my paper was too abstract (and he or she was right, I suspect). So in revising the paper, I have tried to add some possible examples, all based on funding proposals we have been developing. They are not great, but I guess they are a step in the direction of explaining what we mean and I will try to develop them further in the next few weeks (thanks to all who have contributed in one way or another to developing these ideas).
Use Cases for a Work based Mobile Learning Environment
These use cases have been developed as both as part of our research into designing a WoMbLE and in pursuit of funding possibilities. In all of the use cases context is critical factor, although the nature of context varies form case to case.
1. Use case for computer students on work placement programmes
Time is precious for students on short work placements and experience has shown that these students need immediate help when they are stuck with a problem, for example debugging a Java / C++ program or using Google’s SMTP server for setting up test e-mail systems and setting up paypal payment systems. They normally try to seek help from people at the work place and the university tutors, however they prefer interacting with fellow placement students for trouble shooting and learning from each other’s experience before seeking help from company / academic staff. In the past, they have used Google groups.
The WoMbLE is designed to provide multi-user and multi-media spaces where learners can meet up with co-learners, to allow students to tag fellow students, academic staff and work colleagues (contacts); when a problem arises this service will enable collaborative problem solving. A ‘dialogue game’ service, that can be linked to the tagging of personal competencies, will be available to scaffold students in their active collaboration and ‘on the spot’ problem solving.
2. Use case for the continuing professional development of printers
Despite rapid technological change there are low rates of participation of printers in Continuing Vocational Education and Training (CVET), including traditional e-learning.
The aim is to enhance printers’ participation in CVET though self-directed, work-integrated and community-embedded mobile learning. Innovative pedagogical concepts, technical applications and implementation strategies are designed to provide flexible access to learning and authentic and enjoyable learning experience at work.
The use case addresses the emerging need for on-demand and on-the-job training in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The integration of work context, mobile learning and online communities enables authentic and immediate learning whenever needed. Combined with relevant, appealing content and services it motivates “non-learners”, intensifies interaction between peers and experts within and outside of the SME, and exploits small amounts of time and space for learning at work. Printers will use mobile devices to engage in discussion forums, blogs and wikis, document demonstrations of individual skills and activities undertaken in work-settings (e.g. video captures of technical trouble-shooting) and share digital artifacts in online communities in relation to real work-specific needs. The “pick and mix” of learning objects enhances both participation and learning outcomes maximizing choices in terms of method, content, place and time. This approach recognizes the diversity and individuality of learning, facilitates meaningful, authentic social learning and enhances motivation to learn.
3. Use case for knowledge services for Careers Information, Advice and Guidance workers
Careers Information, Advice and Guidance workers in the UK work from district offices but are often required to provide guidance for students’ future careers options in dispersed school settings. They do not always have access to appropriate labour market information and may need to gain information about particular career and education opportunities. In this use case a range of services will be provided through mobile devices to support careers workers finding and collecting appropriate information. The system provides access to specialist databases and to previous work undertaken by colleagues and allows structuring and ranking of resources and artifacts including people and social networks. The system allows users to contribute their own results to the system and support the creation of tags and recommendations, thus developing a shared common knowledge and learning base.
All these use cases involve individuals in learning in a range of different occupations and work based settings. However, they have a number of similar features:
In initial considerations of technical design for a WoMbLE, discussion centred around the development of a generic learning environment. This was driven by desire to produce a cost effective test bed application and to ensure use of as wide a range of different mobile platforms as possible. The latest thinking has moved towards developing what has been called a Mash Up Personal Learning Environment (MUPPLE) (Wild F. Mödritscher F. and Sigurdarson S., 2008) using widgets and provided through specific applications for different mobile platforms. The widget approach could allow services to be easily tailored for particular use cases, user groups and contexts, whilst still retaining generic service applications.
.
The EU funded Politics project is using a web based story telling process to encourage ypoung people to explore politcial involvement and develop their own ideas around politica;l issues and events.
The project intends to use social software and Web 2.0 software to develop learning pathways for participants in six different European countries. One of the first tasks for the project has been to produce a report on Web 2.0 tools for learning. The report has been written by Pontydysgu intern student Jo Turner Attwell, and and is based on previous work by Jenny Hughes in the handbook on Teachers Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments (available for free download on the Taccle website) together with more recent materials posted on the Chalkface section of this web site.
You can read the introduction to the report below and download the full (14 page) version of the paper in ODT and Doc format at the bottom of this page.
Technologies are changing very fast. Up until recently Learning Management Systems – systems that help to organise and administer learning programmes for students and store and organise learning materials seemed to be the most important technology for creating and managing content. But since then, we have seen an explosion in the use of social networking applications like blogs and wikis, as part of what has been called Web 2.0. These are tools that make it very easy for people to create their own content in different forms – text, pictures, audio and video. POLITICS aims to provide Web 2.0 tools to enhance the learning experience achieved within the development of the participants own Politics story. The project hopes to improve the participants knowledge of Politics in their country of residence by leading them through a Webquest type pathway. Embedding these tools into a platform designed to allow communication between participants and collection of resources helps to create opportunities for tasks inspiring creativity within these pathways.
There are currently a wide range of web2.0 tools and programmes, particularly those that are useful in a pedagogical way. Many of these tools are already widely used, such as the microblogging tool twitter, or the video sharing tool youtube. Some systems are simply designed for the sharing of content such as Flickr or Slideshare, however some social networking sites go a step further. Videothreads or PB wiki allows deeper interaction as people can add and contribute to the information or work already there. This means content can be created and edited collaboratively online.
Some of the applications listed below are specifically for creating content, for example, authoring tools, or for storing and sharing materials you and your students have created. Others, like online messaging tools, are essentially designed as tools for communication. Some can serve both purposes, for example blogs. However, it is increasingly difficult to draw a line between them. A Skype text message about the weather may be no more than a simple social exchange between two people but group text chats on Skype by members of a community of practice discussing their ideas can create a rich learning resource. It seems a fairly pointless academic exercise to try and differentiate between them. They are all useful tools and applications for teachers so we are including both.
odt version
Review of existing web20 tools25-1
Doc version
Free digital content
From a Jisc press release:
Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.
EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.
The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.
John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”
The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.
By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.
Open online seminar
Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).
The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”
You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/
EC-TEL 2012
The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.
The focus for the conference includes:
- How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
- How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
- How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?
The deadline for proposals is April 2.
Visitors and Residents
David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.
Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.
The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:
Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.
Watch the Pontydysgu Videos
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
Our next programmes will be live from the German Moodlemoot in Emsden. Full details coming soon
