Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

This Thursday sees the final session in our autumn series of open on-line seminars run jointly between the Evolve network and Educamp.

The seminar, which takes place on the Elluminate platform, is on Mobile learning and Augmented Reality, with presentations from Mark Kramer and Same Easterby Smith, both of whom are leading developments in the use of this technology for learning.
Mark says: “The application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams on mobile devices, as a way to expand the real-world, is finally available for the masses on an affordable basis. Augmented and mixed-reality scenarios are now a common fixture of our technology arsenal of methods to acquire information about our surroundings. This emergence of augmented reality (AR) also has great potential to support individual and group learning. I will share thoughts and experiences on how AR will change the way we view and experience learning in a situated context.”

The seminar takes place at 19.00 (UK time) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time).
Link to Venue: Elluminate

Link for more information: Seminars

For some time now I have been following the development of the Manchester Personal Learning Environment – now called the mPLE.

As Mark van Harmelen explains the “mPLE was first conceived of a response to a perceived lack of usable open source software to support communities and learning in those communities.

Informed by social constructivist and constructionist perspectives mPLE is designed to support individual and group learning activities. The intent is for mPLE to be used by self-directed and peer-assisting groups of learners (possibly teacher-led, but without any special status for teachers in the PLE). In order to support this vision of learning, mPLE combines a social software layer with advanced multi-user multi-media spaces where learners can meet and collaboratively perform learning activities in real time.

mPLE is close to the start of a release cycle, and will be released open source. mPLE is intended to be hosted either by an educational institution, a community group, or a less formal group of individuals. To facilitate easy hosting, one of the distribution media will be virtual machines for SUN’s free VirtualBox, making for a particularly easy install on Windows and Linux machines.”

You can read more about the mPLE on the Hedtek blog.

Hedtek Ltd will demonstrate and discuss the Manchester Personal Learning Environment (mPLE) at two fringe events during the ALT-C 2009 conference.

• 16.00 – 16.40 Tues 8 Sept (Atlas Rooms, Kilburn Building)
• 16.30 – 17.10 Wed 8 Sept (Lecture Theatre 1.5, Kilburn Building)

The Kilburn Building is next to the conference location.

This coming week is the annual Alt-C conference. And, as is becoming standard for conferences these days, many of the sessions will be freely available on line. Alt-C themselves are broadcasting the keynote sessions through Elluminate.

The keynote speaker schedule (all times UK) is:

• Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Tuesday 8 September, 09.25 to 10.25 ;
• Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor Designate of the Open University, Wednesday 9 September, 11.55 to 12.55;
• Terry Anderson, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University, Canada – Canada’s Open University, Thursday 10 September, 11.55 to 12.55.

Just head over to http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/ to access these sessions.

But it is not just the keynote sessions that can be followed online. Many other session organisers are planning some form of on-line participation.

Tuesday, 8 Steptember, 1340 – 1500 UK time sees a debate on the future of Virtual Learning Environments, entitled “The VLE is dead” with short (and lively!) contributions from James Clay, Steve Wheeler, Nick Sharratt and Graham Attwell.  The event will be broadcast on Ustream. Deatils to follow.

Wednesday sees a Jisc Emerge symposium on Institutional Change entitled “Emerging practice and institutional change symposium: a user-centred, learning technology R&D support-community network“. Speakers include George Roberts, Isobel Falconer, Josie Fraser and Graham Attwell. The symposium runs from 9.00 to 10.20 UK time. You can watch the Ustream for this session on the Emerge portal and of course contribute through Twitter.

For those of you living near Manchester but not enrolled for the conference, the wonderful fringe programme organised by F-Alt is open to all. Check out the programme on the F-Alt wiki (hash tag #falt09).

And of course, many other sessions can be followed on line. More details on the official conference Croudvine site or follow on Twitter on the #Altc2009 hash tag.

The Evolve network seminars are back. We have planned a series of open seminars for the autumn in conjunction with the upcoming Educamp Event (November 6-7, in Austria). As the blurb says:

“Once again, the online sessions will be supported by the JISC sponsored EVOLVE Community. Graham Attwell and Cristina Costa, two of the co-founders of EVOLVE, will co-moderate the online events. Together with Martin Ebner they will organise these events. Three sessions will be offered prior to the face to face event in Graz, Austria.

The themes under discussion and the guest speakers of each event are listed below.

• Event #1
  Theme: Open Content
  Speakers: Martin Weller / Martin Lindner
  Date / Time : September 14, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to calender: Link

• Event #2
  Theme: PLEs (Personal Learning Environments)
  Speakers: Ralf Klamma / Erik Duval
  Date / Time: October 8, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to Calender: Link

• Event #3
  Theme: Mobile Learning
  Speackers: TBC
  Date / Time: October 29, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to Calender: Link

The online round tables will be in English and are open for the ‘worldwide’ audience. Elluminate will be the online conference platform used. (A tutorial on how to join the session is available here). The recording of the sessions will be made available afterwards on this website.

Further information about each session and speakers will be published one week prior to event to take place. So check this place often, and also follow the Evolve network on Facebook.

We look forward to the interesting discussions. Stay tuned and help us spread the word about it (when mentioning it on twitter, blogposts, your social networks, etc please use the following tags: #ecg09 #educamp09 #EduCampGraz #ort09).”

Yes, F-Alt is back by popular demand. F-ALT is a fringe event organised to coincide with the annual UK Association for Learning Technology annual conference. This Year ALT-C will be back in sunny Manchester!

As the F-Alt09 wiki says: “Spurred on by the fantastic success of F-ALT 08, we’re looking forward to an even more fabulous series of unconference events.”

F-ALT 09 will consist of a variety of sessions held in public, conference and university spaces. Delegates are encouraged to experiment with format, with slots focusing discussion and allowing participants and bystanders to experiment with an alternative conference format. Participants pick the topics they are most interested in debating and negotiate session delivery on the F-Alt wiki.

So don;t forget – if you have session ideas – stick them up on the wiki and the detail can be worked later. And if you are coming to F-Alt, don’t forget to signup

Much as I enjoy doing presentations at conferences it does seem oh some Web 1.0 ish. So i am working on how to make such events a little more interactive. Twitter is great – if conference organisers can make available a second screen at events. At least then people can ask questions during the presentation (I always tell people they are free to interrupt me but they seldom do). I have messed with buzz groups during the presentation but this always seems a little artificial.

I like the presentation Dave Cormier did at the WIAOC conference last weekend. I wasn’t at it, neither have I watched the video but his community crowd sourced slides both provide a wealth of shared learning and give the impression the event was a lot of fun. For explanation of the idea behind it see his blog.

I am going to try doing something like that next week at the ProLearn Summer School in Zilina.

I have just been writing a long overdue abstract for my keynote presentation at the DFG Research Training Group E-Learning conference on Interdisciplinary approaches to technology-enhanced learning (IATEL) in Darmstadt in June.

I was not quite sure what to talk about – the overall theme I was given is Learning in Networks – from learning in the Network to the learning Network and back.

So I am crowdsourcing the abstract to blog readers. What have I missed out? What other ideas should I include? All contributors will get a citation on the final slide!

Abstract

Graham Attwell will look at the evolution of learning networks.

The presentation will also look at the development of educations systems and the spread of mass education through an industrial model with curriculum based on expert knowledge. He will go on to examine key issues including control at the level of content, institutions and curriculum.

The presentation will look at the changing ways people are learning and developing and sharing knowledge using Web 2.0 and social software tools. Such practice is facilitating the development of personal learning pathways and integration within dispersed communities if practice.

The presentation will examine recent ideas and theory about learning in networks including the idea of rhizomatic curricula and connectivism.

As learning networks become more important, the issue of digital identities is attracting more attention. How do individuals interact in learning networks and whet is the role of tools such as Twitter? How important is the idea of place within learning networks?

The presentation will consider how learning takes place in Personal Learning Environments drawing on the work of Levi Stauss on bricolage and Goffman’s dramatulurgical perspective.

Finally the presentation will consider the implication of ideas of learning in networks and Pe

I left AltC early last Thursday morning to travel to Leiden in the Netherlands for a meeting of the Eurtrainer porject. Eurtrainer is developing a network for trainers in Europe and together with Cristina Costa and Dirk Stieglitz, I am organising an online confernce on the training of trainers on November 5 and 6. The conference is free and you can register online on the Trainers in Europe web site.

Anyway here is the main conference blurb.

First International on-line conference – 5-6 November 2008

The Network to Support Trainers in Europe is launching its first annual on-line conference on “the Training of Trainers” on 5 and 6 November, 2008. The confernce is co-sponsored by the Jisc funded Evolve network.

Who is the conference for?
The conference is for all those interested in the training and professional development of teachers and trainers. This includes teachers, trainers, tutors, researchers, managers and policy makers and other interested individuals.

About the conference
The conference will take place through the internet using the Elluminate conference tool. We hope this will not only reduce the carbon footprint of our activities, but will allow wide participation by those who might not be able to travel. The conference will utilise simple web-based tools and will be accessible by anyone with an internet connection and a web browser. For those of you not used to presenting on the internet, we will provide full technical support and a short pre-conference training course.

To find out more go to the conference technology page.

Conference themes
The conference will be organised around four themes:

• Theme 1 – The changing role of trainers in learning
• Theme 2: E-learning for trainers
• Theme 3: Work-based learning
• Theme 4: Support for the professional development of trainers

Go the the conference themes page to find out more.

Speakers

Speakers include:

Professor Alan Felstead and Nick Jewson, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK

Professor Alison Fuller, School of Education, University of Southampton, UK

Professor Alan Brown, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, UK

George Roberts, Oxford Brooks University, UK

Barry Nyhan, Ireland

Seija Mahlamäki-Kultanen and Anita Eskola-Kronqvist, HAMK, Finland.

Eduardo Figueira, Academus, Portugal

Simone Kirpal, Institut Technik und Bildung, Univeristy of Bremen, Germany

John Pallister, Wolsingham School

Cristina Costa, Pontydysgu, UK

Doris Beer, Germany

Vance Stevens, Abu Dubai

Carla Arena et al – United States, Japan, Ukraine, Argentina and the UK

Anne Fox, Denmark

Regina Lamscheck Nielsen, DEL, Denmark

Linda Castañeda, University of Murcia, Spain

Titles and abstracts for the presentations can be found on the programme page. Presentations will be 15 minutes allowing 15 minutes for discussion.

Exhibition

There will also be an on-line exhibition. Go to the exhibition page for details of how you can participate.

Registration

The conference is free. However, we would ask you to please register for the conference in advance as places are limited. Please go to the registration page. It is possible to register for one or more of the four seperate conference sessions.

More information
For more information email the project coordinator Simone Kirpal – kirpal @uni-bremen.de or the conference organiser Graham Attwell – graham10 @mac.com.

Next Friday – June 20th sees the next in our regular series of Evolve Open on-line Seminars. The topic of the seminar is Mentoring and 21st Century Skills. Anne Fox will lead us on this topic with her Keynote Presentation (further information here: http://tinyurl.com/4oetve ). The event promises Interesting conversations and discussions.

The event will take place at 1300 BST, 1400 CEST or other time zones check here.

The Venue for the presentation is in Elluminate – http://tinyurl.com/4tcmxh (no password required)

There is also a challenge based on a activity around the June topic. See how to get involved here.

Finally please do get yourself an account on the  Evolve platform. There is lots going on (more news next week).

For those of you old enough to remember, the Yippie leader, Jerry Rubin, once said “Do it!”. And at the start of this year we at Pontydysgu resolved that was what we were going to do. We cannot research Web 2.0 and social software tools for learning without doing it. IN May we launched Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE with a regular monthly broadcast Emerging Mondays. We are planning a new publishing venture (watch this space). And we have launched a regular monthly Open on-line seminar series through the Evolve community.

The next Evolve seminar is on Friday 20 June at 13.00 British Summer Time, 14.00 Central European Summer Time.

Evolve is a Community project which aims at organizing a series of Open International on-line events and seminars to:

•Provide a space for participant driven discussion and debate
• Promote critical inquiry and discourse
• Allow for the presentation of ideas in progress
• Share expertise, ideas and future thinking around common research agendas

All documents and products from the events will be published as Open Educational Resources.

This month we will focus on Mentoring and 21st Century Skills. Anne Fox will lead us on this topic with her Keynote Presentation (further information here: http://tinyurl.com/4oetve ). Interesting conversations and discussions will certainly emerge from it.

Do share your thoughts and experiences about this theme, and of course tag it (evolvejisc) !

Your contributions are invaluable to keep this community going. We want to learn from you!

The synchronous event will take place in June 20 at 1200 GMT (For other time zones please check here: http://tinyurl.com/4u7fp3 ).

The Venue for the presentation is in Elluminate – http://tinyurl.com/4tcmxh (no password required)

Challenge:

We will also be hosting a topical activity around the June topic. See how to get involved here.

And if you still haven’t got your own freefolio spot on the Evolve platform, there is still time to do so. You just need to create an account!

We hope you join us. This is will be a great chance to network, to get to know what other people are doing, and also to share your work and ideas.

If you have any questions, suggestions, problems logging in, etc please don’t hesitate to contact us

Pontydysgu’s work centres on developing and supporting an open community around the use of ICT for learning. The Evolve seminars are a step in that direction.