Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning Pontydysgu.org

No time to stop to look at this in any depth (am writing a new paper on Personal Learning Environments). But Brendan Barrett from the UN University reports that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has just endorsed a recommendation to promote e-learning including the following specific reference to Open Source software and Open educational Resources:

“E-learning can be a powerful means of creating open educational resources accessible to everybody thus counteracting a divided knowledge society. In this regard, the Assembly calls on member parliaments to support the so-called “open source” movement in software development and initiatives for open educational resources – freely accessible on the Internet, and to adopt measures to combat the digital divide in order to close the gap between those who have access to ICT and the acquisition of ICT skills and those who do not, thus ensuring digital literacy for all.”

This is good news! You can find out more here.

I am a big fan of radio. As regular readers will know I think it is the coming media And my favourite station is BBC Radio 4. For variety, production values, imagination and innovation, radio doen’t come better. Sometimes I listen live but mostly I listen on the web based iPlayer. The iPlayer makes programmes available for up to a week after they have been broadcast.

Yesterday I listened to “Will you still love me tomorrow.” This was a brilliant history / social commentary on the girl groups of the late 1950s and 1960s. It is a fascinating programme telling not only of the influence of these groups on the evolution of music and especially the influence of the girl groups on the Beatles, but of the social impact in terms of identities. For the first time women talked directly of their feelings and sexuality. And many of the women were black at a time when in the USA black musicians still were restricted by the colour bar. At a time when music in the USA tended to be dominated by local bands with different musicians producing cover versions of the same song in different states, the girl bands achieved national (and international) status.

This was a great history programme, exploring a subject which has previosuly been forgotten. It has the power to inform our thinking of the past and of the future of culture and society. But in a few days it will be gone, removed from the iPlayer and consigned to an unaccessable archive. This is ridiculous. It is as if a book was published and placed in libraries - only for all copies to be withdrawn after a week.

It is not only the BBC’s fault. They, as much as anyone else, are the victims of the stupid copyright laws. But surely the BBC can do more to support open access. Yes - I know that it is perfectly possible to record programmes - if you are prepared to break the law and have a little bit of knowhow (I have recorded this programme). But may people do not know how to do this and anyway may not stumble on the programme during the one week window of availability.

Surely something can be done. It is not just a question of open educational reources - this is our history which is being locked away.

NB Don’t forget to listen while the programme is still available.

The European Commission funded Bazaar project was set up to look at the use of Open Source Software and Open Content in education. The project ended in December, 2007. As ever the work of compiling the reports and different outcomes of the project takes a little time after a project. One output is a new report “BAZAAR Project Scenario Papers “. This report is based on a scenario setting exercise and two workshops - one entitled How Dude -where’s my Data and the other on Personal Learning Environments. However the scenario setting exercise went further and included:

• Social Software, Tools and Content Creation
• OERs and the Culture of Sharing
• Interoperability and Metadata
• PLEs, e-Portfolios and Informal Learning
• Open Educational Resources
• Data Integrity and Storage

The report - which is 41 pages long - is attached below.

Here is an excerpt on short term scenarios for social software in education.

“These short term scenarios are a vision of a future that incorporates the use of social software for knowledge sharing, capability development and education and training delivery. They are presented in order to gauge an understanding of ‘how it could be’ if social software was more widely adopted by education practitioners. This future is very close!

Social software will force us to completely re-think our business and delivery models for many activities. It’s already happening in the media and many other industries from telecommunications to music and book-selling. Usage of social software is way beyond how people learn – it is about how organisations see themselves and how they do business.

Integral to the visions of the future is the realisation that the ‘Generation Y’ is a significant part of that future. They are already engaging with social software and making connections and sharing knowledge. The ‘Generation Y’ is a significant driver in the uptake of new technologies, along with business in its quest for efficiency. Organisations and education need to ‘catch up’.

The sense of urgency for change is perhaps being forced by the convergence of the changing nature of working and learning in a knowledge era and responding to the needs of the ‘Generation Y’. This generation are natural multi-taskers (or, at least, very good fast-switchers). They innately use technology to communicate within and outside of their working lives.”

I thoroughly recommend this report for anyone interested in social software, open source, open content and so on….

Download the scenarios report here.

From the Jisc web site: “Oxford University is launching a web site to allow members of the public to submit digital photographs or transcripts of items they personally hold which are related to the First World War. This ‘Great War Archive’ site will run for three months and aims to collect together artefacts, letters, diaries, poems, stories that have been passed down from generation to generation reflecting the true experience of the First World War but which are now in danger of being lost.This resource, which will subsequently be made available free of charge on the web from Armistice Day this year (November 11th), is being collected as part of Oxford University’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive project. The JISC-funded project is based on the 10-year old award winning web site which digitised the poetical manuscripts, letters, and war records of Wilfred Owen.”

Great idea. But even better would be if it was not just memories from the UK but from every country afflicted by that terrible war. I know there are many German readers of this blog. Has anyone any ideas they can contribute?

In the past I have expressed concerns about the processes of developing policy on Open Content and the need for transparency and inclusivenss in that process. The new UNESCO publication: ‘Open Educational Resource: The Way Forward‘ is an example of how to do it the right way - by building and encouraging interchange between an international community of interested through the inetrnet. As Susan D’Antoni says in her intorduction “Over the period that the OER community has been in existence, we have been able to link many more people andinstitutions than would have been feasible through other means. Experts and neophytes alike have come together to learn from one another, share information and deliberate on related issues. Finally, after two years of intensive interaction, members expressed their opinion on the priority issues and the stakeholders that should take action to advance and support the growing movement.

This document is a testament to the power of group deliberation in a vibrant virtual community. It presents the way forward for OER based upon the informed opinion of an international community, and sets out priorities for future action. It will be of interest to many readers – from decision and policy makers at the national level to teachers and academics at the local level. ”

The report identifies six priorities for the Open Educational Resources community:

• Awareness raising
• Communities and networking
• Developing capacity
• Quality assurance
• Sustainability
• Copyright and licensing

The OECD supported community is currently developing resources for awareness raising through story telling on a wiki.

One last thing - this publication is a testament to the dedicated and inspired work by Susan D’Antoni - I have had the pleasure of meeting her on a number of occasions. Building a community like this is no small undertaking and its success is largely down to her.

I hoped I would never have to write the word ‘Blackboard’ on this blog again. But the news that Blackboard have won their US court case claiming patent infringement against the Canadian D2L platform cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed. For readers new to the blogoshere, Blackboard, the once market leading e-learning vendor, some one and a half years ago obtained a patent claiming they had invented the use of computers for learning (and just about everything else). That the patent is patently absurd is of no matter, nether that it is being challenged. As Stephen Downes reports: “The East Texas jury managed to wrap up deliberations in an afternoon and get away for the weekend with a judgement of $3.1 million in favour of Blackboard. The reaction across the web was generally one of dismay, though there were some mitigating factors: first, the settlement was much less than Blackboard as wasking, second, the verdict did not include an injunction against sales of Desire2Learn software, and third, the patent is still under review by the U.S. ”

The issue of patents is not going to go away, even if the review subsequently revokes the Blackboard patent. Ofc ourse as Stephen says the USA uses patent laws to “supplement tariffs and trade restrictions” whilst preaching open trade when it suits them. And it is not just Blackabord that is doing this - in fact it is perhaps surprising no major e-learningc ompany has tried it on before. Only this week Apple applied for a patent for automatically creating customized podcast mashups from various podcasts. The patent filed talks of: “Improved techniques to facilitate generation, management and delivery of personalized media items for users are disclosed. Users are able to influence or control content within a media item being personalized. In one embodiment, personalized media items are podcasts. Users are able to influence or control the content in or with a podcast. In other words, a podcast can be created in accordance with a user’s needs or specifications so that the content within a podcast is customized or personalized for the user.” How the hell can Apple claim a patent for audio mash ups.

And on Friday the Guardian newspaper reported the UK government “is to consult on legislation to punish internet service providers if they fail to take action against the illegal downloading of music, films and TV programmes.

The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, made the proposal to crack down on illegal downloading today as part of a wide-ranging strategy paper designed to support the UK’s creative industries.”

Writing in the same newspaper a day earlier Cory Doctorow explains ” the phrase “intellectual property” is, at root, a dangerous euphemism that leads us to all sorts of faulty reasoning about knowledge. Faulty ideas about knowledge are troublesome at the best of times, but they’re deadly to any country trying to make a transition to a “knowledge economy”.Fundamentally, the stuff we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge - ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. ”

Doctorow goes on to say: “Copyright - with all its quirks, exceptions and carve outs - was, for centuries, a legal regime that attempted to address the unique characteristics of knowledge, rather than pretending to be just another set of rules for the governance of property. The legacy of 40 years of “property talk” is an endless war between intractable positions of ownership, theft and fair dealing.

If we’re going to achieve a lasting peace in the knowledge wars, it’s time to set property aside, time to start recognising that knowledge - valuable, precious, expensive knowledge - isn’t owned. Can’t be owned. The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral realm of thought, but that regulation must be about knowledge, not a clumsy remake of the property system.”

I am not so sure how the state is able to do this. One thing is for sure. All the legislation in the world is not going to pursude young people that music is just a commodity to be bought and sold according tot he rules of copyright. And the ISPs know it. My take - which I have probably written on this blog before - is that capitalism is trying to extend the notion of provate goods into the sphere of ideas. Just as technology makes it easier for us to express ourselves and to make things for oursleves, capitalism tries ot take that right away - and if they can’t stop it happening - they are dammed sure they want a curt of the action.

The Blackboard affair is just another round in this fight. It ultimately represents an attempt to privatise our rights to education and our rights to learning, to turn the means an tools for developing knowledge into a private commodity.

Those of you looking at our project page might have noticed a project called Taccle. Taccle stands for Teachers’ Aids on creating Content for Learning Environments. We would like to ask you to help with the project by filling in a short web based questionnaire. There are links to different language versions of the questionnaire at the bottom of this post. But, first you may want to know a bit more about Taccle (or if you wish - just scroll to the links at the bottom).

What is TACCLE?

The Taccle project helps teachers to develop their own e-learning materials.

It provides :

• step by step guidance in teacher friendly ‘how-to-do-it’ handbook
• practical training to develop skills you can use in your own classrooms
• a web site packed with information

Who is it for?

The Taccle project is designed by teachers for teachers and caters for those with only basic computer skills and limited technical support.

The handbook and the training are geared to the needs of the classroom teacher but teacher trainers, ICT support staff and resource centre staff my find them useful too!

It provides both practical support for teachers who want a ‘hands on experience’ and also help and information for teachers who just want to find out about e-learning.

Why TACCLE ?

Information and Communication Technologies are being increasingly used to create richer learning environments.

In all sectors of education from primary schools to adult education, in schools for pupils with special education needs and in colleges and universities, technologies are being used across the curriculum to enhance students’ experiences.

However, technology is not enough. The creation of high quality content is essential if the potential of ‘e-learning’ is to be realised in a way that stimulates and fosters Life Long Learning. It is important to train teachers how to design and develop their own content and generate learning materials that can help their own students and can also be freely exchanged with others. This is the aim of the TACCLE project.

What exactly will TACCLE do?

• Train teachers to create content for electronic learning environments in the context of an e-learning course
• Enable teachers to identify and decide which ICT tools and content are most useful for particular purposes.
• Teach teachers how to create learning objects taking into account information design, web standards, usability criteria and reusability (text, images, animations, audio, video) and which enable active, interactive and cooperative learning processes.
• Enhance the quality of e-learning environments in education by training teachers how to use them effectively and by creating resources to help them do so.
• Stimulate new approaches in teacher training related to the concept of lifelong learning, knowledge sharing and peer learning.
• Encourage teachers to share the developed content with their using existing repositories.

The first step in our work is undertaking a survey of teacher training needs for creating e-learning materials. We would be very grateful if you could assist in our work by filling in the survey. It will take about five minutes to complete.

1. English Language Version

2. Dutch Langauge Version

3. Spanish Language Version

4. German Language Version

5. Italian Language Version

Please visit the Taccle website. the handbook is being created on a wiki. If you are inetrested in contributingplease email me.

Some time ago I read the transcript of a speech by John Seely Brown on Learning, Working and Playing in the digital Age. In the speech Seely Brown talked about how young people used the web as bricolage.

I have cited this in quite a few papers. Jenny Hughes was reviewing one of the papers for me and objected to my citing the idea of bricolage to Seely Brown. Bricolage, she said, was a key idea in Levi- Strauss’s thinking amongst. I had fogotten about this but Jenny had not. She gave me a copy of a book called “Introducing Levi Strauus and Structural Anthropology” by Boris Wiseman and Judy Groves. It is a great book and it has pictures and cartoons - I love these easy introduction books. And indeed there is a section on bricolage:

“To describe the functioning of the logic of the concrete - the essence of a pensee sauvage - Levi-Strauss usesd an unusual analogy. The logic of the concrete he says is the mental equivalent of bricolage - intellectual D.I.Y.

Levi-Strauss’s notion of briclolage has many different applications for all of those from anthropologists to literary critics and philosophers, who have recognised themselves in his portrait of the bricoleur and drawn their own lessons from it.

Levi-Strauss contrasts the work of the bricoleur to that of the engineer, and uses this opposition to characterise the two modes of understanding which underlie, repsoectively, primitive science and modern science.

At the same time, he also applies his concept of bricolage to myth, thus opening up the whole question of its specific reference to an understanding of the processes of artistic creation.

This is how the bricoleur works.

Unlike the engineer who creates specialised tools and materials for each new project that he embarks upon, the bricoleur work with materials that are always second hand.

In as much as he must make do with whatever is at hand, an element of chance always enters into the work of the bricoleur.

Levi Strauss draws two analogies with myth. First, considered in its genesis, myth, like bricolage, is an assembly of disparate elements: it creates structures (i.e. narratives) out of events.

Second, myths are always constructed out of the disarticulated elements of the social discourses of the past. In this too they resemble bricolage.

The bricoleur is in possession of a stock of objects (a “treasure”). These possess “meaning” in as much as they are bound together by a set of possible relationships, one of which is concretized by the bricoleur’s choice”.

I have been increasingly interested in unearthing alternative design principles to that of instructional design. It seems to me Levi-Strauss has written the definitive guide to using Web 2.0 and learning. I have an aspiration - to be a true bricoleur.

The first post of the year. And practice seems as good as any a subject for short entry. For the last couple of hours I have been searching the internet for examples of appropriate and effective (or good, but I never liked that term) practice in blended learning. It is for a European funded project producing a guide for teachers on blended learning. And although the subject may seem a little old fashioned for UK based e-learning researchers, in many European countries this is a new concept. I also like the project because of its focus on pedagogy and pedagogic practice rather than on technology and platforms as is all too common.

It should be easy, I thought. Most e-learning in the UK is, in reality, a mix of different modes and forms of learning. But it was to prove not so - or perhaps my search strategies were uninspired. Whilst it is relatively easy to find research articles about blended learning - and tehir are a number of handbooks etc. these tend to focus on rubriucs of curriculum and technology design. It is much haredr to find anything which really dives into the practice of deisgn and delivery of blended learning.

I started wondering why. Perhaps it is because we still seem to have problems in evaluating effective and approariate learning using technologies. Is it because we do not know what we are really looking for? Is it because we have inadequate understanding of what makes for effective learning? Or is it because we do not understand the processes of inetraction in teaching and learning.

I was talking about this with my friend and colleague Jenny Hughes. Jenny has worked for many years in training teachers and trainers. We were discussing the difficulty in recognising and researching effective teaching practices. In truth we know little about what actually happens behind the closed classroom door. Of course teachers and trainers exchange experiences - mostly, I suspect, through telling stories. Some teachers and trainers exchange materaisl they have found to be useful. We have some pretty good programmes for school managers. Yet we still have great difficulty in explaining what makes for effective teaching - even more so in passing that on to others. Indeed it sometimes seems that teacher training colleges teach everything else except how to teach. Jen and I went on to talk about how we might design a research project to identify effective teaching practice based on observation and developing shared metadata for describing practice.

More on this next week. And I will give you my list of examples of effective and appropriate practice when I finish it. In the meantime, if you have any examples, I would be very happy to hear from you.

Happy new year.

On Friday we organised the Bazaar project conference - Show that you Share - at the University of Utrecht.

Personally, I greatly enjoyed the conference - as I think did other participants. As with previous Bazaar project events, the conference was designed to be participant led.  And we wished to draw on the experiences and expertise of those attending to develop new ideas and knowledge. It will take a little time to draw out the different insights from the discussion. But for me what became very apparent was the link between social networking and Open Education Resources.

Whilst the Open Educational Resources movement continues to grow in terms of ideas and support, a number of major issues have not been answered.

• What is the motivation for developing and sharing Open Educational Resources
• How can we find  appropriate resources
• How can we provide resources in a format which is easy to edit and adapt
• How can we track the use of resources
• How can we provide contextual metadata

Whilst much development work has gone into the creation of repository services, use of repositories in at best uneven. The long tail probably applies - most Open Educational Resources are available on local machines, local networks or little known servers.

What has perhaps not been probably considered is the influence of communities or social networkas as a major factor in resource sharing. People are happier to share if they know the community in which the resources are to be used and equally people are more trustful of resources if they come from a community of which they are a member. Yet resource repositories have focused on subject or discipline as the main way of finding and prioviding resopurces - there is seldom any focus on who created them for what purpose.

Refocusing on people and through people on practice could overcome many of the barriers listed above. This does not mean that resources would be limited to closed networks. Social software allows a transfer of trust and trust relations between people in different networks. But of course social software focuses on people  and and practice, rather than artefacts.  The Open Educational Resources movement has tended tofocus on the artefacts themselves, rather than people. If we could build on social software to provide social networking for resource creators and resource users, it might be we could take the OER movement a further step forward.