Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

The organisers have announced an extension until April 10 for submissions to the PLE2011 conference taking place at the University of Southampton. UK, from July 11th to 13th 2011. The PLE Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.  Full details from the conference website.

Sounds of the Bazaar is planning a live internet radio broadcast from the German Moodlemoot conference, to be held in Elmshorn from 14-15 April, 2011. More details to follow

Many of the presentations from the he ‘Mobile learning: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments’ Conference, held in Bremen last week can now be found on the Cloudworks site. If you would like to add anything please feel free or if you need help just send us an email.

All software is a beta. And we are forever messing with the structure of the Pontydysgu web site. So here is a new innovation. We are going to use the front page right hand column for short news items and announcements (please feel free to send in anything you would like to be posted there). And that frees up this news column. For what? For an editorial column, I think. Or an excuse for a rant.

And here goes rant number one. I am ever more dismayed by projects claiming to use technology to measure competence. Why? Because firstly I think we should be using software to develop imagination, to let people play, to encourage creativity, not restricting the idea of what is or is not legitimate learning or achievement. And secondly simply because I don’t think we can measure competence through software. Inevitably such attempts become just lists of tasks or formal knowledge which can be ticked off – with or without the help of evidencing. Such check box lists tell little of what people can really do and next to nothing about their ability to use skills and knowledge in real world situations. It was that approach which led to the near demise of the first wave of e-Portfolio development. And it is time we learned from that lesson.

Here endeth the first rant

Slides from Helen Keegan’s great and much discussed keynote at last weeks Bremen Mobile learning Conference. Be sure to follow up the wonderful short films she refers to.

Fabulous short (2 minute) film by Sophie Sherman made on a mobile film. (Why has this only had 791 views – it deserves a much wider audience) . Via Helen Keegan in her presentation from the Bremen Mobile Learning Conference.

Just a few quick comments about the Mobile Learning Conference Bremen, which took place last week. By all accounts it was a big success – at least if the feedback from participants is to be believed. And I enjoyed it greatly.We had about one hundred delegates – from 19 different countries according to Judith Seipold. What were the lessons for the future?

1. The conference theme – ‘Mobile Learning: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments; allowed us to look at learning from a  number of different perspectives including from pedagogy, the arts and entertainment as well as from technology. As learning is embedded in ever wider contexts these perspectives can provide us with a richer and wider perspective on our work.

2. The venue is important. Although it raised some eyebrows when we said we were holding the conference in a youth hostel – the deign and location of the building – allowing different interlinked spaces with lots of light and right by the river (with a sun terrace) – facilitated informal discussions and learning linking the formal presentations and workshops with that valued ‘out of conference’ time.

3. Conferences do not need to be so expensive. We only charged 50 Euro per delegate and provided free access to students. How did we do it? Firstly the youth hostel gave us an excellent deal – considerably cheaper, I suspect, than we would have been charged by purpose built conference venues or by universities. And it was a no frills conference – no gala dinner and no free iPads. We managed all the administration ourselves using free or open source software – EasyChair, Twitter, Google forms etc. (The most tricky bit was negotiating with PayPal which took for ever).We begged and borrowed equipment.

Ok it was a bit touch and go – we haven’t paid everything yet but my guess is we will make a profit of about 45 Euro. But if we can do it so can others – the cost of conferences at the moment excludes many people resulting in a poorer discussion.

3. We encouraged multiple formats including workshops and demonstrations. the poster sessions was particularly good. And although the multiple strands meant some of the sessions were quite small it was those sessions which in my experience were the most interesting.

I think we still have some way to go in integrating unconferencing sessions properly in the agenda. Unconferencing takes a lot of organization and facilitation. But perhaps we should stop thinking about a dichotomy between conferencing and unconferencing and look at how we can encourage the maximum involvement and participation in all of our work.

4. We have got some sort of record of our conference on Cloudworks. But that took a lot of work and we need to look again at how we can pull together diverse information sources from the different places – slideshare, twitter, blogs etc which people use to show their work and ideas. This links back to the idea of how we amplify conferences and events.

5. We had a relatively small local organising committee. This has pros and cons. On the good side this allowed us to work together informally and intensely. On the down side it resulted in a few individuals ending up with a lot of work. We also had recruited a lot of reviewers prior to the conference which spread out the time consuming work of reviewing proposals. And we were extremely lucky to be able to draw on support from students from the local university who did this work for free as part of their studies.

And people are already asking about next years conference. I think we should do it again. But one suggestion is we might stick with the Crossing Boundaries theme but move on with the technology. After all mobiles are not alone in crossing those boundaries!

I have been meaning to blog. I actually feel the need, but in the end it’s a bit like sport. The more you do it, the more energy you find to keep doing it. Once you start ‘tricking’ the routine, … Continue reading →

Niedawno, 21 i 22 marca odbyła się „Mobile Learning Conference: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments“ w Bremie – konferencja dotycząca mobile learning, czyli wspierania nauki  przy użyciu telefonów komórkowych.

Wraz z partnerką naukową z Hiszpanii zaprezentowałyśmy na niej nasz nowy projekt dotyczący kursów uniwersysteckich, ktróre torzymy razem ze studentami z Berlina i Tarragony. Nasze kursy oparte są na metodzie „action based reasearch”, której celem jest właczenie studentów do wspólnej pracy naukowej.

Studenci pracują w małych grupach nad przez siebie wybranych pytaniach badawczych dotyczących użycia telefonów komórkowych do nauki, pracy w zespole, zarządzania wiedzą itp. W trakcie kursu studenci zostają wprowadzeni w aplikacje i metody mobile learning oraz podstawowe metody badawcze oraz sami w grupach definijują pytania badawcze i wybierają odpowiednie metody do przepowadzenia badań. Są w tym procesie wspierani przez nas wykładowców.

Projekty są przeprwadzane „zza biurka” lub „w terenie”, np. studenci  przepowadzają ankiety w firmach na temat aktualnych lub przyszłych zastosowań mobilnego Internetu  i używają do tego celu technologi komórkowych. W ten sposób mobile learning jest jednocześnie treścią i metodą kursu.

Studenci używają różnych urządzeń – takich, jakie są im dostępne – od prostych telefonów komórkowch, przes Smart Phones do Tablets (np. iPads). Pod koniec semestru grupy z Niemiec i z Hiszpanii prezentują wyniki swoich badań i dyskutują na temat rozpoznanych różnic w obu krajach. Prezentacje i dyskusje odbywają się w ramach wspólnych konferencji w sieci.

• Więcej na temat naszego projektu i kursów mobile learning na naszym blogu: http://ourmproject.wordpress.com
• Program konferencji w Bremie: http://www.londonmobilelearning.net/downloads/Bremen_programme.pdf

What is the purpose of education? To express and exchange ideas about matters which concern us all. To exchange those ideas freely and openly without fear of ridicule, in spaces where we are respected equally. To be privileged to listen to the ideas of significantly knowledgeable others. To share and grow in our ideas. To participate in collective experiences, to grow in understanding and to make meanings. To learn about and respect other cultures. The purpose of education is to open the box and draw on the imagination of individuals and collectives in the passion for learning and to influence and shape our societies.

Sadly the reality of education is different. All too often education is based on divisions between those that have and those that don’t, differences of class and income, differences of gender and religion. Education is about conforming to the norm, heterogeneity, of fitting in to prevailing power structures and economic realities – realities dictated by the logic of capitalism. Education is institutionalization, testing and certification. And for those who do not conform, education is about rejection and failure.

Thus we see a very basic contradiction in the debate around the purpose of education. A contradiction between the provision of free or subsidized education to provide the factories and enterprises with sufficient skilled labour to produce profit and between educators and learners who value ideas and knowledge to shape and change society.

And technology is important. Educational technology has achieved little other than facilitating the management of learning. But the internet has allowed knowledge and learning to escape from the walled gardens of the institutions. Some forty years ago, Ivan Illich envisaged how we could use computers to deschool society and open learning to all. Freire developed the idea of a critical pedagogy where education meant the  ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. Friere wanted to overcome the dichotomy between the teacher and the learner, thinking instead of the teacher-student and student-teacher.

The internet provides us with rich and free spaces for expansive learning. The institutions only have left their monopoly on funding and on certification. And so capitalism has begun a new project. The first aim is to strike out at democratization of learning by privatizing education, by deepening barriers to equality and access. And the second more audacious aim is to privatize knowledge itself, to turn knowledge and learning into a commodity to be bought and sold like any other consumer good.

Thus we find ourselves at a turning point for the future of education. The contradictions inherent in the different views of the purpose of education do not allow any simple compromise or reform minded tinkering with the system. For those that believe in education as the practice of freedom there are two challenges: to develop a societal discourse around the purpose of education and secondly to develop transformative practice, as teacher students and student teachers.