Archive for April, 2011

« Previous Entries

Does education need its own cloud?

April 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

The education technology community is forever forecasting future trends – and little wonder in a fast changing technology world. And almost every list poses cloud computing as a major trend for the future provision of education services and Technology Enhanced Learning. It is not difficult to see why. Technology provision is increasingly complex and is probably not seen as a core activity by institutions. Outsourced cloud solutions may be much cheaper and can free up staff to work on teaching and learning development. many UK universities have formed partnerships with Google to provide email and other services.

Yet the events of this week with a still unexplained outage by Amazon causing many sites to be unavailable for a sustained period and a not inconsiderable data loss, coupled with the hacking of user names, passwords and bank details from Sony may cause some rethinking.

Of course it could just be seen as a technical issue. Amazon need better back up, Sony need better security. But I think we need to view these events from a socio technical viewpoint. Do we wish that educational data and services are trusted to multi national coorporations? What should the relationship be between institutions and external service providers? If so, what data? Do these organisations understand what data is critical – for institutions and for learners? What rights should learners have over their own data and how can this be provided?

In the UK Jisc is exploring the potential for joint educational cloud service provision. This seems to me the right way to go. There seems no denying the potential power of cloud based services. This could be especially important for smaller schools and colleges, many of whom are struggling to even maintain Moodle. And there is no guarantee against outages or security problems if these services are controlled by educational bodies. But if the community is in control of its own services at least there is a chance that the socio technical issues related to service provision and data security have some chance of being understood.

Posted in e-learning 2.0, technologies, Wales Wide Web | No Comments »

Who are our friends?

April 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
Tim Hume’s reflections on social networking following listening to a talk by talk by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar — “who famously posited that most humans can only handle around 150 social relationships.”
To these lies of social software I would add:
- Toy communicate with each of your friends in the same way
and
- You want to communicate the same things to all of your friends
clipped from gigaom.com

And they’re pretty bang on:

As a result, he has outlined what he calls four “lies of social software:”  the set of assumptions almost every social service online makes, despite the fact that there is ample evidence that they’re wrong.
  • Your friends are arranged into discrete groups
    		•
  • Your friends are equally important
    		•
  • You can manage hundreds of friends
    		•
  • Friendship is reciprocal and equal
    		•
      blog it

    Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »

    The future of PhDs

    April 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
    i would largely agree with this statement. However, it is far harder finding an answer. Two ideas posed here – more cross disciplinary research and more real-world-problem based research have considerable merit. But how can we open up access to research and participation in universities whilst at the same time providing career progression routes.- especially in countries with less advanced economies?
    clipped from www.nature.com

    Most doctoral-education programmes conform to a model defined in European universities during the Middle Ages, in which education is a process of cloning that trains students to do what their mentors do. The clones now vastly outnumber their mentors. The academic job market collapsed in the 1970s, yet universities have not adjusted their admissions policies, because they need graduate students to work in laboratories and as teaching assistants. But once those students finish their education, there are no academic jobs for them.
      blog it

    Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »

    Pomp, nonsense and supression

    April 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
    This just about sums it up for me….
    clipped from www.newstatesman.com

    So this is England, on the 29th of April, 2011. The marriage of the heir to an archaic and largely powerless royal dynasty is celebrated with pomp and circumstance, whilst dissent of any kind is suppressed on the smallest pretext, or none. If you step outside the system, if you refuse to stand and shout hurrah, if you question the narrative of easy privilege, if you offer an alternative or try to live one, you are a dangerous freak and you will be punished. The poor get poorer. The rich get richer. And England Prevails.

    **My littlest sister, who still studies at Brighton College, attended the festivities decked out in solemn black, accessorised with our Nanna’s funeral veil, in mourning for British democracy. The kids are alright.
      blog it

    Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »

    Researching education and training: Notes on cultural approaches

    April 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    I have had several requests for this paper, co-written in 1990 with Jenny Hughes, and realised it was not available on the internet. So I have published it to Scribd.

    The paper looks at comparative research in Vocational education and Training and the possible uses of cultural theory as a research methodology. This extract explains some of the thinking behind such an approach.

    The focus of much comparative research has been the comparison of different paradigms in VET. Set against a common background of globalisation of the economy, the rise of multi-nationals and shared technologies, these paradigms show a marked convergence across Europe and there is a seductive similarity between, for example, work organisation paradigms, curriculum paradigms and research paradigms. This has increased the tendency to undertake ‘point to point’ comparisons across member states, often based on task or functional analysis. And yet the outcomes of such research, whilst providing descriptive data which empirically reinforces the notion of converging trends is often at odds with what VET researchers ‘know’ to be true and which the general populus assumes as ‘common sense’; that is, that there are major cultural differences leading to apparently inexplicable divergences of practice. The challenge for VET research is to construct more robust tools for analysis which can accommodate and reconcile both the convergences and divergences.

    Much of the existing comparative research takes as its starting point a single VET paradigm and deconstructs that paradigm into its elements. Thus, ‘VET’ would be the highest level of a tree diagram and the paradigmatic sets under observation would be branches below it.  These  may be labelled, for example, `employment patterns’,  `new production methods’, `trainer training’, `cultural issues’, `curriculum’ and so on.  The elements or items within the paradigms would form the next level of branching. For example under `new production methods’ there might be elements labelled `Just-in Time’ or `island production’ or `co-makership’.  Under  employment patterns there may be `self employed’, `employed by SME’, `unemployed’ and so on. Each of these elements can also be subdivided into properties or descriptors (which are actually paradigms in themselves).  For example `unemployed’ could be expressed as ‘average length of unemployment’ or `number of unemployed males over 25’ or `average qualification level of unemployed women’ or whatever.   The  number and type of paradigmatic sets are similar across member states as are the items within each paradigm, hence the apparent  convergence. Much quantitative comparative research maps and compares element against like element looking for differences in properties across member states. Occasionally it compares paradigm with paradigm but work at this higher level of aggregation level is more often seen in collaborative research.

    What is rarely taken into account is the syntax which exists between the paradigms, a syntax which is determined by the culture which generated it and is as culturally specific as the rules of grammar are language specific. The syntagmatic relationship (or syntagm) which defines the way in which one paradigm articulates with another is, for the most part, ignored but it is here that the divergences across member states are located.

    What VET needs is a grammar capable of analysis at a systemic rather than structural level. It needs a grammar robust enough and sufficiently rigorous to challenge and provide a real alternative to both functional and structural analysis but sophisticated enough to examine the cultural realisation and cultural meaning of sectoral and regional differences, national identities, gender, class and language.

    Thus the model should not take  `VET’ as a starting point for the tree diagram and then simply disaggregate it – with `the cultural dimension’ being a paradigm or even an element within several paradigms and the assumption that it lends itself to comparison as readily as unemployment figures.  Rather we should put ‘culture’ at the top of the tree diagram with VET being one (disaggregated) manifestation of that culture

    Functionalist analyses break down VET into a series of components that, not only .fails to recognise their significance within societies and cultures, but renders comparisons less, rather than more, meaningful.  Stucturalist and post structuralist schools continue to pursue structures of likeness and contrast, differences played against similarities. It follows that if all the factors which determine VET culture are themselves different then the component parts of those features are bound to be different.

    Given the role of culture on Vet and of VET itself within its cultural context, then it may be of value to access that corpus of knowledge and theory in the field of cultural studies. The next section of this paper will look at some different ideas drawn from cultural theory and examine their applicability for comparative VET studies.

    New Culture Paper

    Posted in Culture, Knowledge development, learning, Pedagogy, research, Wales Wide Web | 1 Comment »

    PLE Conference Keynotes

    April 26th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    The PLE2011 conference being held in Southampton from 11-13 July has announced its (un) keynote speakers – Cristina Costa, Scott Wilson, Riina Vuorikari and Les Carr.

    According to the conference web site they will provide key insights and understanding of what makes a PLE, from personal experience, through individual analysis and with thoughtful speculations on the future directions of this important field. “Each of our four keynotes will offer a slightly different perspective on Personal Learning Environments and each guarantees to ensure that their sessions attain the high level of interactions and audience engagement which was established with the first conference in Barcelona.”

    Posted in news bites, ple, PLE2011, PLEs | No Comments »

    What is a MOOC?

    April 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    Great video by Dave Cormier explaining the idea behind Massive Open Online Courses.

    Posted in Multimedia | No Comments »

    Why do we place so much emhasis on grades?

    April 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
    Interesting blog post by Ryan Bretag who was invited to listen to student proposals on improving education. Ryan talks about the iaaue of grading and assessment.
    clipped from www.ryanbretag.com

    Grades and Motivation
    It warms my heart to hear students wanting to find ways to de-emphasize grading and shift our focus to intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. This may be one of the most difficult educational ideologies to break for all stakeholders. How do we convince people that grades are meaningless when society itself places a great value on them: scholarships, college admissions, etc? How do we address the legacy mindsets about the need to have grades?
      blog it

    Posted in uncategorized | 1 Comment »

    User Generated Content

    April 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    Another example of user produced content taken from Martin Weller’s wiki page produced for the Open University LearnAbout Fair. Martin highlights the  DS106 Flickr pool. He explains “This is an open course that gets students to submit photos to Flickr, tagged with the course code. The course gets students to follow the DailyShoot assignments for two weeks, and then to take photos and create a 5 picture story. It’s a good example of using other services and tools and students generating content that they all get to benefit from.”

    Posted in Multimedia | 1 Comment »

    Twicket!

    April 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    Today, I greatly enjoyed watching the video and listening to the internet radio commentary of a village cricket match from Wray, a small village in Lancashire in the UK. The hashtag #Twicket trended on Twitter.

    Wray was chosen because it has fast up and down connectivity to the internet. The event was truly absorbing, even though the quality of the cricket could have been better!

    Organiser John Popham explained: “The serious side is to demonstrate that it can be done, it IS possible to live broadcast events like this using relatively cheap equipment and a good internet connection. It will also demonstrate the importance of good internet connectivity in rural areas, and the need for fast UPLOAD connections if we are to realise the aspiration to use the internet to enable more people to produce their own content.”

    The event certainly showed that. And it provided a glimpse into the future, where we are freed from the domination of big business entertainment providers. It was especially heartening to see so many on the Twitter feed asking can we do this? Congratulations to all involved.

    Posted in News | No Comments »

    « Previous Entries

    • Search Pontydysgu.org

      News Bites

      2012 Horizon report

      An advance copy of the the NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition, due to be launched on June 14, identifies mobile devices and apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less. Game-based learning and personal learning environments are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; and augmented reality and natural user interfaces emerged in the third horizon of four to five years.

      OER Quality

      A new project is attempting to define quality standards  for open educational resources in higher education; this is part of the OER Quality Project, a joint research between the universities of Barcelona, Santiago de Chile and the University of London.

      The researchers for this project are lecturers and academic librarians and aim to define a set of quality standards and develop a good practices guide both for content design and for  indexing open educational resources in institutional repositories.

      They are looking for university lecturers, readers or professors (distance learning lecturers welcome too) willing to answer 2 surveys  (20 minutes each) and to evaluate a set of OERs, according to certain guidelines and criteria, which will take 30 minutes to answer. To participate, please register here.

      Hangouts on Air

      Personally I am not a great fan of Google+, although as Google increasingly integrates its different services it is hard to avoid. But, as Stephen Downes points out in the ever valuable Oldaily, citing an original blog post by David Andrade, “by far and away the best thing about Google+ is the Hangout feature, essentially a way to have a videoconference with ten of your friends. This latest upgrade allows you to broadcast your Hangouts to as large an audience as you want. “With Hangouts on Air, you will be able to broadcast yourself publicly to the entire world, see how many viewers you have, and even record and reshare your broadcast. The public recording will be uploaded to your YouTube channel and to your original Google+ post.”

      With free skype video calls limited to two people and the increasing cost of proprietary synchronous elearning platforms like Blackboard Collaborate, Hangouts could become the system of choice for open online courses.

      Gadgets and widgets

      The Dutch SURFnet have announced the ‘Edu-Socializing Seminar’, to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on June 12th and 13th. They say “Gadget and widget technology is gaining momentum in the Research and Educational community. Projects like the Role Project, Apache Rave, Sakai OAE and OpenConext implement and deploy these technologies, showcasing the possibilities and benefits of such loosely coupled and distributed environments. The projects address a wide variety of needs from within the community like, among others, personalized learning environments, mashing web and social content, distributed learning and online collaborations.

      The event seeks to explore trends and foster these developments internationally, by bringing together experts from different fields into one event and joining them in a community. With interactive sessions the workshop wants to enable sharing of ideas and knowledge. At the same time the event wants to trigger new developments. With dedicated breakout sessions, common challenges can be addressed and solutions can be targeted.”

      More details on the seminar wiki page.

      ECER 2010

      The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

      On the ECER 2010 website.

      Taccle handbook for teachers order form

      Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

      Twitter

      Follow Graham Attwell on Twitter Follow Cristina Costa on Twitter Follow Dirk Stieglitz on Twitter

      Other Pontydysgu Spaces

      • Pontydysgu on the Web

        blip.tv
        Watch the Pontydysgu Videos
        pbwiki
        Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
        Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
        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

    • Sounds of the Bazaar AudioBoo

    • Recent Posts

    • Archives

    • Meta

    • Upcoming Events

      • Thu, May 24 – Fri, May 25:Learning through virtual environments: A challenge for the promotion of positive parenting

      • Categories