The whole debate over Google Glass is a bit of a puzzle. There is certainly plenty of coverage of the initial limited public trails. The tech press is generally in raptures, perhaps because they have at last an innovative new toy to play with (or at least to dream of playing with).

The popular press has run a series of rather contrived stories about how Glass can give you headahes, is dangerous for drivers, is a threat to privacy and how users are showing no respect to others etc. etc. Oh, and someone comes up with an unsupported (and probably non working) plug in that takes a photo when you wink and gets aches of coverage.

What there seems to be no discussion of is the potential for serious applications for Glass. We are looking hard at the possibilities of wearable computers for vocational education and training. We haven’t got our hands on a prototype from Google (we aren’t rich or famous enough). But there are other manufacturers who have already released production versions of glasses with similar if more limited functionality and we hope to be trying these out at Bau ABC, a construction industry training centre in North Germany. I am especially interested in the potential for informal learning.

And there are a whole series of research groups looking at the potential of Glass like products in the medical field.

It would be nice to think that Google would be working with such research. But instead its policy of releasing a number to “Glass Explorers” who pay 1500 dollars each for the privilege looks more like a publicity stunt than any serious attempt at research.

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I enjoyed this presentation by Steve Wheeler at a recent Elesig seminar. Nothing new here. But Steve always produces great slides and it provides a very neat overview pulling together developments in the pedagogy of learning using technology. There is also a recording of the seminar, attended by some 95 participants, on the Elesig portal (login required).

In my introductory post I told how I was pushed to write a series of blog posts about the value of learning from everyday life situations in different work organisations (including our own ones). This was posed as a challenge for the research partners and technical partners of the Learning Layers (LL) project. After some hesitation I got the point and came to the motto “Socio-technical fantasy and learning in everyday life situations”. (I owe much to C. Wright Mills and to Oskar Negt.)

Here, I want to report of a strange story that we experienced when we here at ITB (Bremen) tried to complete some administrative duties for the LL project and for that purpose sent a letter quickly to CIMNE (Barcelona).  This is how the story went on:

1. Episode: We had to provide documents with  signatures of the authorised persons of the University of Bremen and to send them by post (not only as scanned copies) to CIMNE. We were among the first to obtain the signatures and were ready to send the letter long before the end of November. I was about to engage a courier service (DHL) but colleagues from our administration convinced my that DHL is only the other part of the German post and that a registered letter would be delivered just as quickly.

2. Episode: One week passes and another week has started and the letter has not arrived in CIMNE. Most of the other partners have sent their ones and we are in the rearguard. The web monitoring service of the German post only tells us that the letter has been delivered to a foreign partner. The website of the Spanish post could not inform of the adventure of the letter. So, since we got concerned, we sent an official inquiry to the German post (date 30.11.2012) to find out, what had happened to the letter. We received an automated answer that the German post will promptly examine, what has been the cause of the delay and inform us asap.

3. Episode: Immediately after sending the inquiry we received the good news that the letter had reached CIMNE and that the finalisation of main contract between European Commission and CIMNE could be completed immediately. So, the big problem was no longer there. Nevertheless, we wanted to keep the inquiry going on to find out what had happened (and to see how it will be explained to us).

4. Episode: Just before the Easter holidays we get an official letter from the German post (dated 18.3.2013)  informing that the letter has unfortunately not been delivered to the recipient (CIMNE). There is no explanation what might have happened. Instead, there is a helpful advice, what to do to get a compensation for eventual damage.

Concerning our theme, “learning from everyday life situations in work organisations” we can draw several lessons and locate them on different levels (or – if you insist -  layers):

a. Lessons learned by the individuals involved: We at ITB have drawn our own conclusions on the question, which means of delivery we can rely on in our international correspondence. We also noticed the limits of the web-based monitoring services.

b. Lessons learned at the level of ‘knowledge sharing’ in the organisation: At the moment this story is being shared as a joke that is being told to colleagues as a part of informal chatting. However, there is a far more important lesson that needs to be learned across the organisation. This time a threatening problem situation was avoided but one should be prepared.

c. Lessons learned at the level of ‘knowledge sharing’ in a wider international community: Looking at this story from a wider international perspective, it is again one of those stories of things that have gone (almost) wrong because of practicalities (like sending the letter securely). In some cases huge consortia have lost the chance to submit bids because letters of commitment have not reached the coordinators in due time. This raises a question, whether someone should create a knowledge sharing tool (“Erfahrungssammler”) to raise awareness of such problems and to give recommendations for appropriate practice.  …

I stop my story here before the fantasy carries us too far away from the realities of everyday life. Of course I have put a bit of exaggeration into  my last point. Indeed, it is easy to try to push others to examine their everyday life situations (with the hope that they find the episodes as stimulus for learning). It is a bit more difficult to get inspired of one’s own experiences with everyday life situations as described above. However, this is the motivational hurdle that the LL project and the partners try to overcome.

To be continued …

After a holiday break it is time to catch up with the developments in the Learning Layers (LL) project. My previous postings were about design ideas and how to get them well grounded. Indeed, there are plenty of lessons to be learned.

In one of our recent meetings I told a story about administrative oddities at the sidelines of the project. Suddenly our colleague Werner started to analyse this story and identified many aspects  of informal learning (to be shared with others) and many challenges for developing our capability to share lessons learned (with or without web tools). The more we discussed, the more we found ourselves in a similar position as our application partners, whom we want to inspire to share episodic information from their everyday life and promote learning via sense-making and scaffolding.

Thanks to a strong push from Werner I have started a new series of blog postings in which I follow this lead by treating episodes, challenges and critical (if not heretical) questions.  I have given these a common heading “Socio-technical fantasy and learning in everday life situations”.  I have taken the liberty to follow the roads that were started long ago by C. Wright Mills (“Sociological imagination”) and by Oskar Negt (“Soziologische Phantasie und exemplarisches Lernen”). I wish that the said forerunners do not mind that I have copied their influential headings and adapted them for the LL context. What I do hope is that the following blog postings help us to identify the value of everyday life situations in different working contexts (including our own ones) and to see the challenges, how they can be treated as a basis for learning.

To be continued …

In the past, I spent a lot of time researching different kinds of knowledge and how they could be supported by vocational education and training. In particular, I was trying to counter the reductionist approach, as embodied in the then National Vocational Qualifications in the UK, which came from a narrow understanding of competence. Lately I have been returning to that research to try to understand how technologies can support the development of vocational competence and knowledge in a workplace setting.

This is an extract from a paper entitled  ‘Work process knowledge, Communities of Practice and the development and introduction of mobile learning applications in the workplace’, submitted by myself, Ludger Deitmer, Lars Heinemann and Pekka Kamarainen to the ECTEL 2013 conference. You can download the full paper in PDF format here.

When thinking about knowledge development in a richer way, it may be useful to distinguish between different types of knowledge. Lundvall and Johnson (1994) identify four different kinds of knowledge, each requiring different types of mastery: know-what, know-why, know-how, and know-who.

Know-what refers to knowledge about ‘facts’: it can be considered as equivalent to what is normally called information and related to the knowledge ‘corpus’ that each category of experts must possess. Know-why refers to scientific knowledge, influencing technological development and the pace and characteristics of its applications in industries of every kind. Also in this case, knowledge production and reproduction take place within organised processes, such as university teaching, scientific research, specialised personnel recruiting, and so on.

Know-how refers to skills – that is, the capabilities to do something in different contexts (e.g. judging the market prospects for a new product, operating a machine-tool, etc.). Of course know-how is typically a kind of knowledge developed at the individual level¹, but its importance is evident also if one considers the division of labour and degree of co-operation taking place within organisations and even at the inter-organisational level (for instance, the formation of industrial net-works is largely due to the need for firms to be able to share and combine elements of know-how). Know-who is another kind of knowledge which is becoming increasingly important, referring to a mix of different kinds of skills, in particular the social skills, allowing the access and use of knowledge possessed by someone else.

Rauner et al. (2013) modified these categories in order to bring it in line with the ideas of situated learning and communities of practice, emphasising the role of work processes and the corresponding work process knowledge. The categories of know-what and know-how still refer to ‘factual’ knowledge and the ways of ‘expressing’ it in a work process. The third category, know-why, refers to why to carry out a specific task in a certain way (or, if more appropriate, in another). This modification is due to the insight, that work tasks as well as work processes in post-Taylorist work organisations do not follow a logic of right/wrong. Instead, a solution to a problem can be more or less adequate. This adequacy depends on a number of partly conflicting factors, One may programme the control of a car’s motor giving different weight to factors like acceleration, fuel consumption, high speed, exhaust emissions, etc., according to the intended main use. An electrician may counsel his or her customer on the design of a lighting system regarding costs, efficiency, ecological aspects, sustainability, ease of maintenance, etc., according to the end-users’ ideas. This, then, has the consequence that vocational learning has to address all these three dimensions of knowledge as a whole. The ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön 1983) is not someone reflecting on what he or she has done after work, using analogue or digital media. ‘Reflection’ is a category built in the expert solution of work tasks requiring a deep knowledge of the work process a given task is embedded in.

Each kind of knowledge is characterised by different channels through which learning takes place and can be supported in different ways using technologies. The easiest cases are those of know-what and know-why, that can be obtained through the typical channels of knowledge acquisition (watching videos, accessing data bases), while the other two categories are rooted primarily in practical experience and in terms of technology enhanced learning have been more problematic insofar as they require the availability of informal social channels. Apprenticeship is a fundamental channel for acquiring know-how knowledge: it represents the most important way for skilling newcomers in an organisation, but these protracted processes of learning by doing are also frequently the responsibility of those who are considered the experts in an organisation, capable of above-average performance. Technology can be used to bring together novices and experts Simulations can be used as shortcuts for reproducing the many aspects of the know-how acquisition available in real situations. Mobile technology can capture know-how in the application of knowledge within the workplace. Know-why can be facilitated by helping to make traceable the processes guiding expert workers’ decision making. In general, this points to a use of digital media going far beyond the transmission of information.

References

Lundvall. B.; Johnson, B. (1994) The learning economy, Journal of Industrial Studies, 1.

Rauner, F., Heinemann, L., Maurer, A., Haasler, B. (2013) Competence Development and Assessment in TVET (COMET), Dordrecht: Springer.

Project websites are usually pretty dire. A short piece about the project taken from the project application, a list of partners, news updates of meetings and links to downloadable products.

And that was how we started our website with the Learning Layers project. However, we soon realised that this would not suffice. Our aim is to dramatically scale up the use of technology to support informal learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. To do that we need a forward facing web site -something we can show off to SME managers and be proud of. But that in turn requires content which they will understand and engage with. That is a much trickier part. We need more of a newspaper or journal type website than a traditional project site. This has led to a lot of discussions and we haven’t got all the issues resolved yet. But one thing we have done is moved to an editorial model where instead of having a web site moderator we have an editor. His role is to commission content from the different partners in the project.

And I have been messing around with how to write about project development in a way that it is understandable to those without an advanced knowledge of the technologies, processes and ideas that we are developing.

Here is my first attempt – about one of the design ideas we are pursuing codenamed ‘Sharing Turbine’.

“The Learning Layers project aims to develop a number of new applications to support informal learning in the workplace.  In the first stages of the project we are working with Small and Medium Enterprises in the Construction sector in north Germany and in the healthcare sector in north England.

We are aware that for any applications to gain widespread take up, we have to work closely with managers and workers from the industries. Therefore, we have adopted a user centred design process for iterative development.

What does this mean? We started out with a series of interviews with a wide variety of people from the sector. In construction e gave now made over 50 interviews, looking at work organisation, learning and peoples present use and attitudes towards technology. This was followed up with what we called Application Partner Days in both the UK and Germany, where we visited the workplaces and held a series of workshop activities with different practitioners.

The third stage in the development process was a two-day design workshop held in Helsinki. Building on the ideas from the interviews and visits we started to sketch out a series of design ideas for new mobile applications. The working groups for the four design ideas that emerged at the workshop brought together researchers, developers and industry practitioners.

Since then, the working groups have continued to meet online and are using a wiki to develop the design ideas.

Each of the design ideas has been given a working name. The idea for the Sharing Turbine design idea came from the construction industry but we hope it may also be of use in the health sector.

Apprentices in the construction industry in Germany learn their trade in three different locations: vocational schools, on the job in companies and in a training centre. At the north German training centre – Bau ABC – they undertake a series of practical projects. These last from o0ne to three days and may involve working individually or as a team. They are given project briefing sheets and save the report of their work on paper which is collected in a white ring bound folder. This has a number of practical disadvantages. Obviously paper folders do not last well on a building site. And although they can use photographs in the report on their work, the folders are predominantly text based. The use of multi media could allow much more detailed and rich reporting. It could also allow a richer representation of the different physical objects and tools used in construction. In fact one of the reason that elearning has been slow to take off in the workplace may be just this issue of how to combine learning through digital media with the physical nature of much work activity.

So the first idea behind Sharing turbine is to transform the present folders produced at the training centre into an electronic portfolio. This would also have the advantage of making it much easier to update the task sheets. Trainees could use a variety of different media directly from heir phones including audio, photos and video.

However the idea behind Sharing turbine goes much further. One of the aims of the Learning Layers project is to capture informal learning. Obviously when apprentices are working in their companies much of this informal learning takes place on the building site. And if they were able to use mobile devices and multi-media learning on the site could be linked to the skills and knowledge gained at the training centre. The portfolio could also become a resource both for dealing with practical problems occurring when undergoing training, but also after they have qualified. At the same time they can be linked to personal social networks, both as a means of sharing learning and knowledge, but also as a human resource for getting help and advice.

The German so called Dual System is rightly admired in Europe for providing high quality apprentice training> one of its bedrocks is combining practical training on the job with theory gained from block period in vocational schools. However, in practice it often proves difficult to link the different phases of training. Sharing turbine could be a critical tool in allowing these different phases of training to be brought together.

The use of Learning Analytics, a process of recording and analyzing learning as it happens – could also allow apprentices and trainers to understand what learning has happened and what new learning is needed – and to develop and refine curricula and training and learning opportunities and processes.

At the moment the Sharing Turbine working group is at the phase of developing wireframes. Wireframes are graphic mock ups of applications. They can be developed rapidly and used in design workshops to test and refine ideas, prior to programming prototypes.

In the next month workshops are planned with companies to get feedback from apprentices and skilled workers. These are not confined to project partners. If you are interested in our work and would like to contribute please get in touch.”

One of the issues which intrigues me about the Learning Layers project is the role of physical tools and objects. We are seeking to develop apps to support informal learning in the construction trade. And one of the big things about construction is that they use a lot of tools, machinery and materials – things that can be difficult to represent in a digital world. Indeed, that is one the the reasons I think elearning has been slow to take off in the workplace, despite the increasing power of mobile devices.

In past work we have tried to understand the learning and work eco-structures through the lens of activity theory. To an extent it is useful, but the bucket category of tools fails I think to represent the central role that artefacts play in work processes.

This morning I stumbled on a paper called ‘Towards a Theory of Social Practices‘ by Andreas Reckwitz. It is not an easy read, at least for me with my limited understanding of social theory. But i find his section on things interesting, particularly the idea that the objects – are the place of the social insofar as they are necessary components of social practices.

This is an excerpt from the section of the paper entitled ‘Things’:

For some reason the construction industry is not a sexy research area. Motor cars, yes, machine tools, yes, the computer industry, yes, yes, yes. But poor old construction, boring. Yet in economic terms, construction could be seen as the most important sector in Europe.

Our initial research under the Learning Layers project reveals some interesting contradictions. The construction industry is probably the biggest victim of the present recession. Even the neo liberal UK government is now taking actions to stimulate house building – through the partial nationalisation of mortgage debts. Probably an emphasis on infrastructure projects or on social housing would have had a bigger impact and would have avoided the risk of another house price bubble. But the fact they are doing anything at all shows the problem.

But whilst the recession has badly hit profitability and employment another concern has arisen in our interviews with construction companies. Managers are severely worried about the ability to recruit new trainees and particularly to recruit the better educated apprentices they see as critical to cope with the increasing use of technology in construction. Managers point to the major issue as being the image of the industry – just as in research they consider the industry not to be sufficiently sexy. They are less likely to discuss issues such as wages, opportunities for progression or just the sheer hard physical work involved in many construction trades. Having said that, reality may be very different from practice in other images which have a positive image. Work in the games industry can be hard, poorly paid and boring. And for every kid who makes a fortune out of a mobile app, thousands make no money at all.

Either way they are right in that there will almost certainly be demand for new skills to deal with technology – both in the uses of technology for construction but perhaps more important the changing materials being used in building today, not least due to ecologiocal and energy saving concerns and legislation. Whilst improving initial education training programmes is one response and attempting to improve the image of the industry, the big challenge may be to improve research and development and to develop more continuous training for existing employees. In this short extract form previous research, below, we provide an overview of the industry in Europe and Germany, together with issues in how training – or informal learning – might be improved.

The total turnover of the construction industry in 2010 (EU27) was 1186 billion Euros forming 9,7% of the GDP in 2010 (EU27). The construction industry is the biggest industrial employer in Europe with 13,9 million operatives making up 6,6% of the total employment in EU27. In addition it has a substantial influence on other industries represented by a multiplier effect. According to a study by the European Commission, 1 person working in the construction industry is responsible for 2 further persons working in other sectors. Therefore, it is estimated that 41,7 million workers in the EU depend, directly or indirectly, on the construction sector. Out of the 3,1 million enterprises 95% are SMEs with fewer than 20 and 93% with fewer than 10 operatives.   The level of investment in R&D in the European construction sector is low compared to other sectors. The construction sector only invests a small portion of its total production value in research, development, and innovation.

The developments of new processes and materials provide substantial challenges for the construction industry. The traditional educational and training methods are proving to be insufficient as the rapid emergence of new skill and quality requirements (for example those related to green building techniques) require much faster involvement and action on all three levels (individual, organisational and cluster) in order to react quickly to these changes and exploit opportunities. Without this the market potential is hampered by lack of innovation skills and training gaps (Dittrich, Deitmer 2003). The increased rate of technical change introduces greater uncertainty for firms, which, in turn, demands an increased capacity for problem solving skills (Toner 2011, 7). This situation is aggravated in some fast developing European Regions because skilled craftspeople are missing. Therefore there is increasing need for rapid re- and upskilling of the building workforce across the construction cluster.

The construction industry in Germany is one of the country’s most stable economic sectors. Providing jobs to more than 2,2 million people it holds a market share of 21% making the German construction sector the largest in the EU27 in terms of production value. In Germany the federal states, enterprises and the apprentices share the costs of the dual education system (practical training in schools and on-site training). The German compensation fund for construction industry SOKA-BAU reported a total of 270 million Euros of training allowances and job training costs in 2010 making it just a little more than 0,1% of the total production value. In fact, the building trade has one of the lowest participation rates for employees towards further training provision than any other sector (TNS INFRATEST 2008). This is because much of the formal training offering is only weakly connected with real work tasks. The cost pressure in building enterprises limits chances for time-consuming training measures far away from the workplace (Schulte, Spöttl, 2009). Any mobile support for learning and informing at the work place would be welcomed by companies as well as by building workers themselves. With enterprises paying for all the costs associated with the on-the-job training, SMEs need a cost effective solution to overcome the issues that occur with the rapid development in the technologies, processes and materials.

I am spending a lot of time working on the Learning Layers project at the moment. There are two interlinked areas on which I have been thinking. The first is design processes – more particularly how we can develop a user centred or co-design process. And the second is how we can scale the uptake of applications and approaches to learning with technology to significant numbers of users.

the two are interlinked, I think, because if we involve users in every part of the design process, we have a reasonable chance of developing software which is relevant to users. However, having said that, we are realising that different users have very different interests. We are working in two main sectors – or industrial clusters – in the construction sector and in the health sector. Motivations and restrains on the use of technologies for learning vary greatly between the two sectors. In the construction sector there seems a general desire to use technology both to improve the image of the sector – and thus attract new trainees – and to update and improve the quality of both initial and continuing learning. In the medical sector, there is probably more concern on how to update learning and knowledge in a situation where time and opportunity for formal learning is very limited. But interestingly, attitudes towards technology also varies greatly between individuals, even in the same workplace.

The original EU specification for the project is that we focus on sectors where the take up of technology for learning has been limited and is lagging behind. This may be a misconception. In truth in both sectors we are finding plenty of examples of learning practice using technology. But we are also finding many examples where there is little use of technology and even where access to social networks or the use of mobile devices is banned. I suspect that we would find a similar pattern in other sectors. So challenge number one is how we involve workers in the codesign process. Should we focus on those who are enthusiastic – as early adapters – or should we try to involve those more sceptical about the potential of technology to support learning in the workplace?

Challenge number two is around the target to upscale to involve significant numbers of users. Although the project is targeted at workers in Small and Medium Enterprises, and we have a number fo these involved as partners in the project, it is clear that we will have to involve industry organisations in the upscaling. the original application was based on the idea of industrial clusters. There is a great deal of research on such clusters, which I will talk about more in a future article. Enough to say, that we are encountering different forms of organisations which bring together different SMEs. These include industrial clusters, usually around innovation such as the use of green technology in construction. But they may also include different networks and communities of practice which may be more or less fomalised. For instance, in Bremen the Electro Innung brings together over 120 SMEs in the electrical sector of the construction trade. It forms part of the structure of craft chambers through which craft trade companies in Germany are organised. And Communities of Practice can cut across more traditional organisations.

At the moment we are working on a User Engagement plan and looking at the potential interests of different stakeholders in the Learning layers project. The intention is that once we have such a plan we can work out a strategy for interacting with these organisations and for taking forward the user centred design process.

Interestingly Google searches on user engagement produce little of interest, mainly being driven by the concerns of social software companies to gain and retain more users. Hover changing the search string to stakeholder engagement yields far richer results. There seems a valuable tradition of research and development by economic and social development organisations and aid organisations seeking to consult with and involve users in various projects. In particular the Stakeholder Engagement toolkit (from which the diagramme above is taken), produced by the European funded REVIT project, provides a wealth of practical ideas.

I would welcome any feedback and ideas readers have found useful around both user centred design and user engagement.

In my previous post I presented some first impressions on the results of the Design Conference of  the Learning Layers (LL) project  in Helsinki in the beginning of March.  I was still travelling back and could only raise the question: How to take these ideas further and make them work “on the  ground”? Now we have had more time to digest the results and to develop our thoughts with both feet steadily on the ground.

This week the ITB hosted a joint meeting of the LL partners working with the North German construction sector (ITB, Pontydysgu, Bau ABC and the Agentur/ Netzwerk für Nachhaltiges Bauen. We discussed the results of the Design Conference and how to organise local design teams to get the design ideas properly grounded. Concerning the follow-up of the Design Conference the participants took note of two videos that had been prepared after the design conference:

• The video prepared by Tobias Ley (TLU) and his team that presented the results of the design team Bits and pieces.
• The video (and slidecast) prepared by Tobias Funke (Agentur) to develop the design idea of the team Captus further. (I now see that Tobias is reworking this video and has named this one as “Old version” – work in progress!)

In the discussion the following comments were made on the results of the design teams in the LL Design Conference:

a) The progress of the design team Sharing Turbine was appreciated since the group was able to make good use of the inputs coming from the application partner (Bau ABC) and the documents prepared by the ITB and Pont teams. The contextual map presented the learning cycles between formal training and workplace learning as a dynamic turbine. The group was approaching a common understanding of the challenges (and the application partners were pleased about this progress).

b) The work of the design team Captus had not reached a similar process dynamic. The abstract modelling of capturing knowledge and the illustration of particular applications could not outline a context for common work. Therefore, there was a risk of design ideas falling apart from user engagement (that was to be linked to the idea of Learning exhibition). From this perspective the video and slide share prepared by Tobias Funke has brought into picture the actual context of design activities and a strategy to address different user groups with different apps.

c) The work of the design team Bits and pieces focused mainly on the health care sector (and on the need to collect experience and evidence for the revalidation of health care professionals on regular intervals). Yet, the approach that was piloted by the group – to collect notes to a box file and then arrange the notes with the help of categories and learning paths seemed highly relevant for the construction sector as well. In particular the approach responded to the needs addressed by craft trade SMEs to develop a collector of problem cases or challenging jobs for further learning (Erfahrungssammler). For the sake of launching a parallel activity the pictures presented under this design idea and the video were helpful. However, to address the North German construction sector, German language versions would be needed.

Based on this situation assessment the following conclusions were made concerning local design teams to be launched for the North German construction sector:

1) The needs of Bau ABC provided the basis for the work of the “Sharing Turbine” team. Therefore, it is obvious that a local design team (in Bremen) is developing some key activities that are supported by a wider design team (involving technical partners). In order to link the work of the technical partners to local activities it is necessary to clarify, what occupational areas are to be covered and what kind of examples of apprentices’ projects can be provided (as scanned documents and translations). Also, to ensure a broad-based user engagement it is necessary to clarify, at what stage different target groups (apprentices, trainers and teachers, companies) will be involved.

2) The needs of the Agentur/Netzwerk für Nachhaltiges Bauen provided the starting point for the work of the “Captus” team. Now, the video and slidecast of Tobias Funke have brought the design ideas back into the working contexts of ecological construction work and addressed the possiblities to use ICT and Web within the forthcoming exhibition. These new perspectives need to be brought into discussion in the wider design team and on its wiki page. This provides a basis for linking the local activities and the involvement of the technical partners.

3) The needs of the Bremen crafts and trades companies provide a basis for a sub-team of the “Bits and pieces” team (working with the idea of the Erfahrungssammler for the companies and the trade guilds. Here, the approach needs to be developed in the light of the progress of the main team and the neighbouring teams.

I think this is enough in this context. The rest of our discussion was about planning the field activities and making sure that we are entering the phase of local design workshops with content-related issues and readiness to put the potential benefits of web technologies to the context.

Here it is worthwhile to draw attention to the need to maintain contacts between the technical partners and the “local” partners working with issues raised above. I see two possible traps that we need to avoid:

• If we leave the technical design work floating in its own realm and expect it to come up with something useful we have the risk of putting the carriage before the horse (if I may use such old-fashioned metaphor). It is not likely that the carriage could pull the horse or that the horse would be willing to push the carriage.
• If we go too hastily to the local design workshops with expected users without having a clear picture what our technical partners can deliver (or refer to) we have a risk of chasing the horse running without the carriage. It is not likely that the carriage could catch up the horse by itself or that a loosely running horse would like to get back to the carriage.

I have just spelled out the risks we have to keep in mind in our daily work and see that the work of our design teams (both at the local level and at the consortium level) take this into account. The good spirit at the Design Conference and the active involvement of partners in the follow-up gives ground for optimism.

Follow-up steps to be expected soon …