Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

Last Saturday, I visited the British Education Technology Exhibition at Olympia in London. I have never been to BETT before and was curious as to what it would be like.

I can’t say I was impressed and three hours left me with a headache and a marked aversion to interactive whiteboards.

I can’t really complain – BETT delivers what it promises on the label – an exhibition of educational technology. Perhaps naively, what I was looking for was something about the use of technology for learning and that I struggled to find.

There were lots and lots of stands showing the latest in shiny gadgets. Most were interactive whiteboards – a throwback I guess to the previous English government’s programme of funding a whiteboard for every classroom.

Being a bit of a nerd myself I like gadgets. But the few that impressed me were those NOT specifically designed for education. I liked HPs 3D printer (although it is not cheap).  And I loved the kit from animationsuupplies.net for stop motion photography and for developing plasticine modeling (shame the software they are using is PC only).

The Hepeel.net stand had the virtue of actually having some kids on it using computers for learning (a radical idea for BETT). And it seemed a little edupunky with print outs of how to use Google docs in education.

Despite all the hype form the ed-tech community about ‘mobile’, there was surprisingly little mobile on display. OK, there were stands showing off different handsets and a few tablets. But there has little on show that you would not find on any city high street.

Although most of the big companies had large glossy stands – including Google, Microsoft and Dell – Apple didn’t have an official stand. But there was a smallish stand sponsored by UK Apple reseller, AT Computers. And they lined up a rolling programme of demos / short workshops by teachers on how they were using the iPad for teaching and learning. These were pretty awesome. I especially liked the demo of how to use the GarageBand (one of my favourite programs) for teaching music. These presentations were full – every seat was taken.

And three seems to be a lesson in that. If you want to attract teachers and trainers to look at your product show how it can be used for teaching and training. But perhaps I am just being naïve again. Are trade shows like BETT aimed at teachers and trainers or are they really for the people with the money who buy the glossy toys for schools and colleges? And how much say do teachers and trainers have in what tech they end up with?

Postnote: Just when I was thinking I have done my duty and been to one of these trade shows I remembered that I had agreed to staff the Mature-Ip project stand at Learntec in Karlsruhe in ten days time. Have to start working on a survival strategy – any ideas welcome.

Last week I took place in a seminar on mobile learning – called SOMOBNET, organised at the Institute of Education in London and supported by the EU Stellar network.

A few things from the seminar have kept me pondering in the days since. Firstly, it seems that although there is a lot of anecdotal evidence as to the widespread use of mobile devices in the workplace – and I think we could speculate that such usage is including learning if only in the form of ‘ring a friend’, we have few if any studies such informal use. Furthermore the present frameworks and theory of mobile learning are very much based on the use of technology for learning within formal educations settings and are of limited relevance to the ways we are using mobile devices today.

To develop such a theory I think we need to look more closely at the nature of practice.

I included two slides on practice in my presentation at the seminar (click on slides below to see full size versions).

Yishay Mor tweeted something like ‘Attwell is proposing practice as an alternative to competence’. I had not realised I was doing that, but thinking further on Yishay’s tweet it makes some sense. Competence as a construct is clearly alienated from the reality to work practice. Yet we have needed such constructs just because we have been unable to directly capture practice as it happens. Furthermore learning and knowledge development have also largely been seen as happening at a distance form practice, through formal curricula and in training centres. The ability to use mobile devices directly in the work process and to capture those work processes through new media removes the need to mediate through externally and often expert derived competence constructs. More on this to come.

In the summary discussion chaired by Sonia Livingstone, I once more reiterated my opinion that mobile devices were most interesting for learning in the context of vocational education and training and occupational practice. Sonia threw me a little when she asked me if this was because I despaired of the school systems. I am not a great fan of secondary schooling systems which I think are largely dysfunctional. But that is not the reason why I am so interested in the potential of mobile devices for learning at work. I see teh ability to use such devices as extending access to learning to the many people who are outside the formal education sector. And I tend to feel that both research and practice in the use of mobile devices will be held back whilst it remains the preserve of educational researchers working from a  schooling paradigm.

Ten wpis jest zainspirowany dzisiejszą dyskusją na temat microlearningu w ramach kursu #opco11 na Twitter.

Temat tak zwanego microlearningu (czyli “mikro-nauka”) i microcontentu (czyli “mikro-treści”) poruszany jest w głównie w odniesieniu do Web 2.0 i mobile learning.  Nowe formy komunikacji, nauki i pracy, które są w dużej części wynikiem stosowania nowych technologi w codziennym życiu, sprzyja powstawaniu takich miniaturowych form nauki i przekazywania treści.

Szczególnie narzędzia Web 2.0 pozwalają potencjanie każdemu użytkownikowi na tworzenie takich mikro-treści, czyli małych porcji, które można skonsumować niezależnie od pierwotnego kontekstu, w którym te treści powstały (zastrzeżenie: oczywiście na poziomie zależnym od dostępu do technologii i kompetencji niezbędnych do stosowania ich). Takie tworzenie własnych treści w małych porcjach (które żartobliwie można by nazwać  “przekąską na wynos”, ale tylko żartobliwie, bo nie chodzi tu tylko o konsumpcję, ale też produkcję treści) może nabrać różnych form, np. mikro-treścią może być wpis na blogu, komentarz do tego wpisu, tweet (z linkiem do dalszej lektury) na Twitterze, albo krótki film do nauki wsadzony na YouTube.

Mikro-treści są więc w pewnejj części treściami generowanymi przez użytkowników, czyli tzw. “user-generated content”. Ale nie zawsze – są też placówki edukacyjne i firmy, które zajmują sie profesjonalnym tworzeniem micro-treści, np. W ramach szkoleń pracowników albo do celów marketingowych. Mikro-treści i mikro-nauka w połaczeniu z Web 2.0 tworzą kulturę “zrób to sam”,  której każdy może być autorem treści przeznaczonych do nauki i innych celów.

Jakiś czas temu ukazała się na ten temat moja publikacja, w której przedstawiłam koncept microlearningu jako strategię profesjonalnego rozwoju w 21 wieku. Moim zdaniem microlearing umożliwia produktywne wykorzystanie czasu i uczenie się w przerwach, np. podczas podrózy do pracy, w poczekalni u lekaża, w domu po pracy.

Oczywiście jest to tylko dodatkowa forma nauki, która nie powinna powstrzymywać ludzi od przeczytania książki albo brania udziału w dłuższym szkoleniu. Microlearning może byc stosowany sam w sobie, np. kursu w formie małych porcji tekstu lub ćwiczeń na smarfona albo jako uzupełniający element, np. dodatkowe nagrania audio do pogłebienia wcześniej poznanych tematów na iPoda albo webinar wprowadzający w temat przed szkoleniem na żywo. Możliwość kombinacji i formatów technicznych jest tu bardzo duża.

Charakterystyczna cechą mikro-treści jest to, że są one oczywiście krótkie, ale też luźno ze sobą powiązane, tzw. każda porcja może istnieć sama w sobie, musi mieć sens sama w sobie, czyli być koherentną jednostką. W przeciwieństwie do typowych kursów, które budowane są hierarchicznie (najpierw musimy nauczyć się czegoś, aby móc przejść do nastęnego poziomu), mikrolearning polega na tym, że każda mikrotreść może być dowolnie używana przez uczącego się. Z dydaktycznego punktu widzenia interesujące jest to, jak planować krótkie mikro-aktywności wokół takich mikro-treści, np. kolaboratywne pisanie krótkich tekstów (np. streszczeń, raportów) albo komentowanie krótkich nagrań audio/video (np. feedback, własna opinia, ocena).

Na koniec polecam kilka pozycji z literatury angielsko- i niemieckojęzycznej (w kolejnosci alfabetycznej):

• Buchem, Ilona/Hamelmann, Henrike. (2010). Microlearning: a strategy for ongoing professional development. eLearning Papers, 21, September 2010
• Hug, Theo (2007). Didactics of Microlearning: Concepts, Discourses and Examples. Waxmann.
• Kaufmann, Catherine (2006). Microlearing and (Micro)Didaktik. Micromedia eLearning 20 Gaining the Big Picture Proceedings of Microlearning Conference 2006 (2006)
• Lindner, Martin (2006). On Macromedia and Microlearning. ALT-C 2006 Research Paper.

Interesting presentation by Scott Wilson. Scott says: “I think the main difference between how I see the world of devices interacting in education and some of the articles I’ve seen recently is that I assume that most of these devices are personal technologies – and because of that they will always be heterogeneous…..So the challenge for education is providing resources and activities in an open and flexible way that will work – at least in some fashion – on any device.”

Steve Wheeler has written an interesting bog post, which deserves unpacking and discussing.

Steve says:

Blended learning (in the established, traditional sense) means a mix of learning activities that involved students learning both in the classroom, and at a distance from the classroom, usually mediated through technology. I am claiming that this type of blended learning – in concept at least – is now outmoded because the boundaries between local and remote have now been substantially blurred.

I think I would largely agree with him although I am not so sure it is due to the blurring of the boundary between local and remote. Reading older papers on technology enhanced learning, there was great emphasis placed on the divide between synchronous and asynchronous communication and how to provide a proper ‘mix’ of technologies facilatating such modes. Today we flip between different modes without thinking about it. Take Skype – if I text someone they may reply straight away or may reply the next day. I may have a series of short episodic conversations with a colleague throughout the day. I may switch from text to audio or video for parts of these conversations. They may be one to one or we may invite others to participants for particular parts of the conversation. Instead of a divide between synchronous or asynchronous communication, tools now support multi modal communication and multi modal learning.

Steve goes on to say:

The new blend is to blur formal and informal learning

Of this I am less convinced. I am in a few problems here because I have often written myself about informal learning. But in truth I am unconvinced of the value of the concept. Indeed there is little agreement even on what the terms formal, informal and non-formal learning mean. If you are interested in this debate there is an excellent literature review by Colley, Hodkinson and Malcom who explore different definitions and uses of the terms. I have tended to use the idea of informal learning in two ways – to refer to learning which takes place outside the formal education system or to learning which takes place in the absence of formal teaching. The problem with the first use of the term is that it refers only to what it is not, rather than to what it is. And in the case of the second, it tends to ignore the influence of what Vykotsly called a More Knowledgeable Other. The More Knowledgeable Other is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process – a friend, a peer, a colleague, who can support the scaffolding of  learning. Technology is playing a significant role in blurring boundaries here. If I read Steve Wheeler’s article, think about it and write my own ideas then surely I am learning, and in this case Steve is playing the part of the More Knowledgeable Other in guiding my thinking. Recently one of my computers was overheating. I searched for and found a web site telling me at what temperature the Northbridge chip should be running (it was running much hotter). I then found a YouTube video showing me how to take my computer apart and clean the filters. Is this formal or informal learning? Do I have scaffolding and guidance in my learning? I would suggest I do.

Even more problematic is Steve’s idea of “informal technology”. I think this may just be careless use of terminology. Of course technologies are not informal or formal. However what is certainly true is that most young people today own various technology based devices, which can be used or as John Cook calls it “appropriated” for learning. And as we move towards near ubiquitous connectivity, at least in richer countries, then these devices provide constant access to all kinds of learning – including contact to those with more knowledge than we have. It is interesting to note that most of this learning takes place in the absence of purpose built education technology, rather we appropriate applications designed for business or enterprise use or for entertainment, for learning.

I think more useful than setting a dichotomy between the formal and the informal is to explore the different relationships and contexts in which learning takes place. Last year Jenny Hughes and I made a slidecast called Critical Literacies, Pragmatics and Education as part of a Critical Literacies course being run by Rita Kop and Stephen Downes as part of their ongoing research project on Personal Learning Environments.

In this we referred to the relationships in which learning take place. These include the relationships between learners and teachers, between the learners themselves and between the learners and the wider community.

We went on to look at context. Obviously this includes place or physical context, which could be described as the learning domain. This might be a school or college, the workplace or at home. Important here is the distance between the different domains. Sometimes this distance will be short (say in the case of an apprenticeship involving workplace and school based study), but sometimes there may be a quite broad seperation between the different domains.

A second context is the social, cultural and political environment in which earning takes place. A third – and to my mind critical – context is the idea of what is legitimate learning – what is learnt and how it is learnt. Obviously this involves the idea of control.

Especially important is the context of how we recognise achievement – how outcomes are defined, what value is placed on learning, by whom and how.

We also raised the idea of discourses – the sum total of the conversations around education. In the past, we suggested, education has tended to be a top down discourse with prescribed and structured strategies  for learning. This is changing and now leaners may be more likely to start from practice without a predetermined strategy for learning.

Thus relations and context or learning are becoming fluid and are contently changing. Technology is playing a major role in these changing relationships and contexts. Such a fluid discourse inevitably leads to conflict with an educational structure based on top down educational discourses.

Yesterday the UK Telegraph and  News of the World newspapers reported that minister of education Michael Gove had announced plans to ban mobile phones from school classrooms from September 2011. This would form part of  government guidance to schools due to be published in July 2011.

Whether such reports are true or not are open to considerable doubt. It seems more likely that Give will give powers to schools to ban phones although they probably could do so anyway. What is in no doubt is Gove’s belief in a very traditional idea of education and his skepticism (or non understanding) of the potential of technology for learning. One of the coalition government’s first acts was to abolish the BECTA support agency for technology in education.

And Gove is proposing giving powers to teachers to confiscate phones form students and search their text messages although it would seem possible that this would be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights.

Anyway as the Telegraph article circulated by Twitter there was a quick reaction from the education community with a Google doc based petition being set up within two hours:

We, the undersigned, believe that such a ban would scupper successful mobile learning initiatives and is a short-sighted, reactionary move. We call for a mobile phone ban to be removed from any guidance published by the DfE.

The petition contains a comments column and elicited many interesting replies.

Danielle Bayes, a teacher, reflected the views of many saying:

Banning mobile devices won’t go any way to helping students understand how to use them appropriately and to their advantage. And for every negative news story concerning mobiles in schools, where is the publicity for the hundreds of thousands of children who are innovators of their time and creatively use them to further their learning?

Hilary Curtis added a parent’s perspective

I expect/require my son to take his phone to school, so that he can let me know if he has chosen to go to the park or a friend’s house afterwards.  This is an important element of teaching him safety and responsibility.  The only safe place for him to keep it at school is in his bag, which means it is with him in class, although he is quite properly not allowed to use it then (though I agree with other comments that there could be planned educational use of phones too).  Schools already have perfectly adequate powers to set their own rules in such matters.

Deputy Headteacher Steve Philp said:

This is just a way of discriminating against the poor. At my school (50% FSM within top 20% deprivation); most parents communicate using mobile phones – it is their way of accessing the internet and information. We are exploring ways of bringing mobile technology into the classroom to increase the links between all our stakeholders (parents, governors, staff and students particularly) and this ban will just disenfranchise students and parents, de-skill teachers and alienate governors.

And Ewen McIntosh reflected the comments of many in that modern technologies cannot be ignored in education:

The problem is not with the device, in the same way that it is not paper that is fault for those writing hateful remarks in books, or in racist pamphlets.

The problem is one of attitudes towards students’ ability, wherever they are, to communicate in private. The attitude of students can be a negative one. But it is the attitude of parents, teachers, school leaders and Governors, that allows us to take negative attitudes and practices, and educate youngsters in the huge potential these devices have for their learning and participation in the democratic process.

Mobile phone use is a crucial part of today’s information architecture, for understanding the world around us and having one’s say in it. To remove it from the principle place of learning is equivalent to removing books in the 16-19th century, televisions and overhead projectors in the 20th century, and the internet in the beginning of the 21st century.

The list continues to grow. It is encouraging that many of the signatures are from teachers and school leaders as well as researchers and developers. But it also poses a question of how a space and discussion opened up in response to reported government policy initiatives can be transformed into a longer term and positive campaign and space for exploring ideas and innovation in technology and pedagogy..

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!

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

Here is the recording of the Sounds of the Bazaar live internet radio programme broadcast from the MLCB-Conference 2011 in Bremen.just as in the first day, we focused on encouraging participants to tell their own stories about the use of mobile devices for learning in different contexts.

First up on this programme was Helen Keegan who has earlier wowed the conference with her presentation on mobiles and film (more to come on this). Jenny Hughes went on to interview Ceridwen Coulby, Alice Huskinson, Prabhjoyt Kler, Catherine MacMillan and  Helen Macrorie, students at Leeds Univeristy Medical School, about their perspective on use of mobile devices in medicine and health care. Antje Breitkopf talks about the One Laptop Per Child project, based on her experience of working with the project in Peru. And in a series of vox-pops Jenny Hughes talks to John Potter and Ludger Deitmer amongst others about their impressions of the main issues arsing from the conference.

Production by Dirk Stieglitz, interviews jenny Hughes and anchorman Graham Attwell.

The music is from the Album “Velvet Dress & Stockings” by Dazie Mae and is available from the Jamendo web site.

License: Creative Commons 3 Attribution, Share-Alike.

Sounds of the Bazaar - LIVE at MLCB 2011 Bremen - Day 2 [ 30:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (731)

The live internet radio programmes from The Mobile Learning Conference Bremen this week were a real gas. We are pretty confident with our sound set up these days which leaves us free to focus on content. And I think we did a pretty good job in catching the debates and ideas of the conference. If you are interested in the theory and practice of mobile learning, then I’d recommend you to listen to the two programmes. Each lasts about half an hour.

The first programme features Daniela Reimann talking about her keynote presentation on art and mobile devices. Andy Black preveiws his popular workshop on future trends in the use of mobiles for learning. Klaus Rummler, one of the conference commitee, tells us why and how the conference was organised. Julia Laxton, from Leeds University Medical School, talks about the use of mobiles in medical education and issues for institutions. Anke Königschulte from Bremen talks about using audio technologies in museums. And last but not least, John Traxler looks at the international dimension of the use of mobile devices for learning.

Great stuff! The music we played is made by Daniel Berges & The Windsurfers on his album Drop By Drop and like the programme itself is licensed under Creative Commons. Graham Attwell anchored the programme, Jenny Hughes was interviewer and as ever the producer was Dirk Stieglitz.

Sounds of the Bazaar - LIVE at MLCB 2011 Bremen - Day 1 [ 35:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (774)