A special issue of the online journal eLearning Papers has been released entitled MOOCs and beyond. Editors Yishay Mor and Tapio Koshkinen say the issue brings together in-depth research and examples from the field to generate debate within this emerging research area.
They continue: “Many of us seem to believe that MOOCs are finally delivering some of the technology-enabled change in education that we have been waiting nearly two decades for.
This issue aims to shed light on the way MOOCs affect education institutions and learners. Which teaching and learning strategies can be used to improve the MOOC learning experience? How do MOOCs fit into today’s pedagogical landscape; and could they provide a viable model for developing countries?
We must also look closely at their potential impact on education structures. With the expansion of xMOOC platforms connected to different university networks—like Coursera, Udacity, edX, or the newly launched European Futurelearn—a central question is: what is their role in the education system and especially in higher education?”
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).
Radioactive 101 is the internet Radio station set up through the Nominet Trust funded Radioactive project and the EU funded Radioactive Europe project. Pontydysgu are proud to be a partner in both projects which aim to give a voice to people excluded from access to mainstream media though Internet radio.
Tonight sees another in the series of broadcasts from Dragon Hall, a youth centre in central London.
Dragon Hall invites you to join their next Radioactive 101 broadcast, happening this Friday (May 3rd) between 19.30 and 20.30pm (GMT). The theme for this will be young people’s participation, with our presenters, interviewers, reviewers, performers and musicians showing that there is more to them than lying on the sofa playing Xbox.
In addition to the material from young people in Covent Garden & Holborn, our friends at The Squad have pre-recorded a ‘live’ showcase event especially for this show. Expect drama, music and chat. Oh and lots of laughing!
We are also really proud to include some guests from abroad- two German young women who worked at Dragon Hall for 2 weeks on work experience and another mixed Swiss/ German group who were just visiting the sights. Both groups talk about their experiences of London and how it differs to back home.
Finally, we are pleased to be hosting some young people from our Radioactive 101 partner YOH in Hackney. They will be talking about their experiences of Further Education, as well as an insightful piece on alcohol.
So we hope you are free to listen and support the real voice of young London.
Pontydysgu is involved in a great project at the moment using internet radio. The project, called RadioActive101 and funded by the Nominet Trust, stemmed from a series of discussions regarding using radio for disadvantaged young people in Hackney in London.
We explained the ideas in our paper for the PLE conference (Ravenscroft, A., Attwell, G., Blagbrough, D. & Stieglitz, D. (2011). RadioActive -„Jam Hot!‟: Personalised radio ciphers through augmented social media for the transformational learning of disadvantaged young people. Proceedings of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) 2011, 11-13 July, Southampton, UK.) :
The aim was to develop a Critical Pedagogical Framework that would “empower the students, together with the teachers, to challenge marginalizing social contexts, ideologies, events, organizations, experiences, texts, subject matter, policies and discourses.” (Williams, 2009). Important in this was the development of an identity that is consciously critical through learners acting as active agents who can take control of the construction of their own being.
We are currently using this cipher concept as a metaphor for designing digitally enabled ciphers within RadioActive. This is a hybrid internet-radio and social media platform to support the transformational learning of disadvantaged young people.
Critical to this is the appropriation of technologies as a form of expression of popular cultures and their use of technologies within those cultures to explore and develop a critical approach. This re-formulation of Freire‟s (1970) seminal notion of developing a critical pedagogical framework in his work on literacy is an attempt to develop new critical literacies through the use of new media.
Over the last nine months we have been working with two youth clubs, Yoh and Dragon Hall, in London and have produced some six or so trail programmes. Now we are working on developing a regular broadcasting schedule. In a future article I will write something about this work.
Since the start of this year, we have extended the project to Europe through an EU funded project, RadioActive Europe, with partners in Germany, Malta, Portugal and Romania. Each country is working with different groups to develop their own internet radio station. To set these up we are holding kick off workshops in each country, with the objective of broadcasting an initial programme. The first of the workshops will be in Germany this Saturday.
With the project “Internet Radio by citizens for citizens,” the MGH treading new ground. For this, the multigenerational people still look all ages who wish to participate. The kick-off workshop will be held on Saturday the 27.04.2013 at 10.00 clock in the MGH. At 13.00 clock then the first webcast (Internet radio) goes live on the air. Then the group will meet regularly with the aim of Internet radio reports to send to local issues. Accompanied and guided professionally in the long term, the project of Andreas Auwärter, Radioactive Europe, Knowledge Media Research at the University of Koblenz-Landau, an official partner of the multi-generational house.
Even programs designed to prepare first of all a lot of fun and is also very easy. The audio format offers a variety of design options, from interviews with experts on property reports and coverage to small acoustic scene games are open to all possibilities. And last but not least Radio is an interplay between mental cinema and stories. Make radio works best in a team. From this we learn not only methods to acquire and evaluate information, but also how to structure them, and presents. But the biggest compliment is to be dialogue with the listeners, who certainly can not wait too long.
There are many ways to contribute its skills do not end automatically at the microphone. A radio needs editors, interview Preparer, appointment coordinators, people with ideas and imagination, writers, presenters, audio designer and much more. Of course, this modern media are actively used all the people to give a voice to the spot. With years of experience of the group Radio Active Europe partners each participant has the opportunity according to their own prior knowledge to learn everything necessary at their own pace.
Radioactive Europe is a two-year research project under the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union, and especially the older generation would like to introduce them to modern information and Communication. Radioactive Europe has set itself the goal to actively use this medium to give people a voice. It particularly interested in those who are otherwise little heard.
Information and registration at MGH 02631 Neuwied call 344,596.
My Spanish is (very) poor. But I am proud to have a chapter, ¿Dónde vamos con los entornos personales de aprendizaje? , in the newly published and free Spanish language book on Perosnal Learning Environments, ” Entornos personales de aprendizaje: claves para el ecosistema educativo en red“edited by Linda Castañeda and Jordi Adell. The book which can be downloaded in PDF format as chapters or as a whole from the book website is 192 pages long and contains contributions from such august authors as Jesús Salinas, Ricardo Torres Kompen, Cristina Costa, Ismael Peña-López, Carlos Santos, Luis Pedro, Alec Couros and Gráinne Conole, amongst others.
In their introduction (according to Google translate) Linda Castañeda and Jose Adell say:
The interest of Personal Learning Environments (PLE, for its acronym in English) is not so much in its conceptual or technological innovation, as in the assumption of a perspective on education that seeks to respond to massive technological and cultural change that has taken place in the last two decades in our society.
From our perspective, the issue of PLE is a node, and hopefully a turning point, at the crossroads of thought, discussion and practice on what to learn and how to learn-and teach-in early XXI century. A magnificent opportunity to reflect on how to alleviate poverty didactic supposedly disruptive initiatives (such as xMOOCs) or how to integrate technology in formal learning beyond providing digital study materials to students. If the PLE are “learning to learn with technology,” PLEs integrate in education is to help develop skills essential in a complex and changing world like ours.
However, reflection and debate on this topic has developed far more informal areas of the blogosphere that the traditional channels of research dissemination (journals and conferences) and, occasionally, with an orientation so excessively so overly technological or philosophical offered with few ideas applicable to everyday educational practice.
This book aims to give the reader an introduction to the concept of ecosystem PLE and pedagogical ideas underpinning it, plus some relevant experiences that exemplify how it can be used in practice in all levels of education and how research is approached from different PLEs perspectives.
There is not a book for experts or, at least, that was not our intention, but we believe that the expert will find it inspiring things. We intend to be an introductory book with a close but rigorous style that offers a modern perspective of the subject without forgetting that pedagogy takes some time exploring these roads.
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.
Great video, found thanks to Mr T. The video looks at the role of the teacher in creating and sustaining a learning community, developing presence and fostering engahement.
As part of the Learning Layers project, I am working on a paper for the ECTEL Conference taking place in Cyprus in September. In the paper I want to look at the nature of different forms of knowledge and how competence is acquired through work based learning. I am also interested in the links between learning and innovation. That got me digging into papers and ideas about innovation. And by serendipity my colleague Jenny Hughes replied to a query from another partner working on the Layers project pointing to some work we did in 2001 on a project called DISC. I can’t quite remember what DISC stands for. Anyway DISC was looking at innovation but within one particular perspective – that of the development and evaluation of the innovation potential of organisations – and that from a viewpoint heavily influenced by Human Resource Development. However, we said, in order to develop a theoretical basis and underpinning for that work it is necessary to be able to locate project ideas and development within the wider framework of innovation theory. In other words in order to understand the work DISC is undertaking it is necessary to review the wider range of literature and project development at a national and European level.
There is some good stuff in that literature review (which I don’t think was ever published and I’ll post a few excerpts over the next few days. If you want a full copy just email me. The first excerpt is on Working, Learning and Innovation. I think I still agree with it. The most interesting point I think, is that whilst Communities of Practice have been criticised as inherently conservative bodies we say just the opposite: that they avoid the ossifying tendencies of large organisations.
“In a paper entitled “Organisational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation”, Duguid and Brown (1991) explore in some depth the relationship between communities of practice and innovation.
Working, learning and innovating are closely related forms of human activity that are conventionally thought to conflict with each other. Work practice is generally viewed as conservative and resistant to change: learning is generally viewed as distinct from working and problematic in the face of change; and innovation is generally viewed as the disruptive but necessary imposition of change on the other two. To see that working, learning and innovation are interrelated and compatible and thus potentially complementary requires a distinct conceptual shift.
Within society, formal descriptions of work and learning are abstracted from practice and education, training and technology design generally focus on abstract representations to the detriment of actual practices. Without a clear understanding of the details of actual practice, the practice itself cannot be understood or engendered through training or enhanced through innovation.
This is seen in studies of the variance between organisation’s formal descriptions of work through training programmes and manuals and the actual work practices performed by its members. Reliance on espoused practice can blind an organisation’s core to the actual – and usually valuable practices of its members (including non canonical practices). It is the actual practices, however, that determine the success or failure of organisations.
This is congruent with Lave and Wenger’s practice based theory of learning as “legitimate peripheral participation” in “communities of practice”. Much conventional learning theory, including that implicit in most training courses, tends to endorse the valuation of abstract knowledge over actual practice and, as a result to separate learning from working and, more significantly, learners from workers. The work of Lave and Wenger, and the empirical investigations of the practices of photocopying technicians undertaken by Orr, indicate that this knowledge-practice separation is unsound, both in theory and in practice. Learning takes place in practice through narration, collaboration and social construction. Communities of work and learning are often non-canonical and not recognised by organisations. Significantly, communities are emergent. Their shape and membership emerges in the process of activity as, as opposed to being creating to carry out a task. Therefore the central task in promoting innovation is not the design or creation of groups but more the detection and support of emergent or existing communities. The recognition of and legitimation of community practices is central to the process of learning in communities. This involves issues of legitimacy and peripherality which are intertwined in a complex way. If either is denied then learning will be significantly more difficult.
The composite concept of “learning in working” best represents the fluid evolution of learning through practice. From this practice-based standpoint, learning is the bridge between working and innovating. The periphery is an important site for learning and for innovation.
Small self-constituting communities evade the ossifying tendencies of large organisations. Communities of practice are constantly changing both as newcomers replace old timers and as the demands of practice force the community to revise its relationship to its environment. Communities of practice develop a rich, fluid, non-canonical world view to bridge the gap between their organisations static canonical view and the challenge of changing practice. This process of development in inherently innovative “maverick” communities of this sort allow organisations means and models to examine alternative views of activity, to experiment based on practice and to step outside their limited core world view and try something new.”
At various times we have pointed out that educational achievement is closely linked to income or – negatively to poverty. Why is this important> Quite simply that many of the measures employed by the UK government target bad teaching or bad discipline or the lack of testing as the reason for underachievement. And it simply isn’t true. Or at least it isn’t the main reason for under achievement.
Living in poverty has a major impact upon levels of educational achievement in Wales. The most widely-used indicator of the number of children who live in relative poverty in Wales is the percentage receiving free school meals (FSM). On average this is about 17 per cent of children in Wales.
The educational performance of these children compared with those who come from more prosperous backgrounds, provides clear evidence of the effect of poverty on achievement. Educational under-achievement by children living in poverty in Wales can be seen as early as the age of three, when they enter nursery. Here the scores in standardised tests for those on FSM can be up to a year behind those of children not receiving FSM. This gap is often closed in the early years of primary education, but it widens again by the age of eleven. At ages 14 and 15/16, standardised tests and examination results reveal that on average there is a gap of 32 to 34 per cent between what children living in poverty achieve compared with other children (Egan, 2012b; Estyn, 2010). The percentage of 15 year olds achieve the equivalent of five or more higher-grade GCSEs, including English (or Welsh) and Mathematics is increasingly regarded as a key indicator of educational attainment. This is because having literacy and
numeracy skills at this level is critically important for progression to further study and into employment. Here, too, there is a significant gap in achievement. In 2011, for example, 21 per cent of young people receiving FSM in Wales achieved this outcome compared with 55 per cent not receiving FSM.
The report finds little evidence that AAB-type interventions – raising aspirations, changing attitudes to schooling and tackling behaviour – have had impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children.
However they found two areas of policy interventions seen to make a positive and sustained impact.
These are:
parental involvement in education;
participation in extra-curricular activities and mentoring
The research, they say, points to four areas of parental involvement which have had success:
improving at-home parenting;
involving parents in school;
engaging parents in their children’s learning and in their own learning;
aligning school–home expectation
Hopefully the Wales government will pick up on the report findings. But there are no signs that the ideologically driven English government will take any notice – indeed it appears that it is looking at how to change indicators of child poverty – in other words to massage the figures rather than look at the real causes of underachievement in school.
Preparations for the 4th International PLE Conference 2013 being held in Berlin, Germany together with a parallel event in Melbourne, Australia are well underway. the conference will take place on July 11 and 12 and the deadline for the call for submission of abstracts is March 4.
The PLE Conference intends to create a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences and research around the development and implementation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.
More than that the PLe conference has always prided itself on innovatory approaches to design in terms of involving participants. This year will see the continuation of the unkeynotes, which Cristina Costa and myself discuss in the video above.
And this year sees another experiment in moving away from the traditional reviewing process to an approach based on ‘shepherding’ or mentoring.
The PLE 2013 review process is organised into three steps:
Step 1(review before the conference): Submitted abstracts for full and short papers are peer-reviewed (double-blind peer-review) by screening their overall fit with the conference scope as well as the degree of innovation, technical quality, significance and clarity of contributions. As a guide, the extended abstract for a full paper should include the background of the study, the approach and methods employed in the work, the results and the conclusion, which should reflect on the successes and limitations of the work and future development.
Step 3 (shepherding) To enhance the participatory character of the PLE Conference the review process is based on the shepherding concept. This means that the authors of accepted abstracts are invited to submit full versions of their papers for the conference and are offered support by shepherds (mentors) in the process of writing final full versions. Upon author’s consent, depending on the overall paper maturity, a mentor may be assigned to a paper to guide the process of preparing the manuscript. Shepherds are experienced authors who, non-anonymously, help the submitters by making suggestions for improvement. The submitters incorporate these improvements into their work over a few iterations, usually three, though this may vary from case to case. The aim of shepherding is to enhance the quality of the submissions and help authors qualify for publication in the International Journal of Literacy and Technology (JLT).
Step 2 (review after the conference): After the conference, the final manuscripts of short and full papers are submitted and peer-reviewed (double-blind peer-review) again to assess their quality for publication in a special issue of the scientific journal. All submissions will be published in electronic conference proceedings under a Creative Commons Licence. However, only best-quality papers will be considered for the Special Issue of the International Journal of Literacy and Technology (JLT).
Where does shepherding come from? What is it about? Shepherding for scientific reviewing started at Conferences on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP’s), a process aimed to help authors to improve their work using a non-anonymous reviewer (shepherd), guiding the author (sheep) on their way (report). The shepherds focus on the organization of the content and the format of articles. Shepherds therefore must be experts in their field and willing to help to improve the work of others. The focus of shepherding feedback is the text itself, there is no discussion of the projects or theories. The goal is to improve the papers for the second review after the shepherding process.
What is the value of shepherding?
Shepherding is now being used by several conference committees to help leverage the potential value of authors’ work by improving them considerably and thus better serving the community. This approach helps to develop more well-rounded articles. It is also an excellent opportunity for newer authors to improve their articles and to get in contact with the community.
What are the principles of shepherding?
Shepherds are experts in their field. The work is of the author. Shepherds advise authors during the process of writing. The person ultimately responsible for the article is the author (sheep). The underlying culture is a gift culture, so it is crucial that shepherds are willing to help authors to improve. The cycles of interaction between authors and shepherds based on Kelly (2008) are:
Author sends the first version of the manuscript to the shepherd and introduces the manuscript briefly in his/her own words;
Shepherds reply to authors, i.e. ask questions (e.g. What is the motivation for the paper? What do you want to achieve? Where can I help?) and provide initial feedback. Constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement are crucial for shepherding!
Authors improve the manuscript by answering the questions and incorporating the shepherd’s feedback.
Authors send improved manuscripts to shepherds and another cycle starts with the introduction of the new version (iterative cycle).
Testimonials from shepherds
“As a shepherd, I get great satisfaction helping authors communicate their ideas. A shepherd is not an editor. Shepherds don’t edit. Instead, through conversations, questions , and dialog a shepherd helps authors find their own voice and write compelling papers. I find shepherding to be a wonderful experience. That’s why I do it: to learn, to help grow communities, and to help people share their good ideas more clearly. It’s so rewarding!” Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (PLoP community)
“In my experience, when it is done well, shepherding results in an increased focus and clarity to the work. A good shepherd can help the sheep really bring out the important message of the work and make it much clearer to the reader. On occasion, the sheep gains additional insights into his own work. Note however, that I have seen some superficial shepherding, which resulted in only cosmetic improvements to the work. So it isn’t an automatic great improvement. It takes discipline to do a good job.” Neil Harrison (PLoP)
“Shepherds are individuals, with experience in writing, assigned to an author’s paper with the expressed interest in helping the author improve their paper or writing of any kind. The shepherding process is essentially a review process where the author gets to get feedback on how well the paper communicates the author’s ideas. The shepherd is able to then make suggestions on making the paper better or to assist with ways on helping the author clarify their ideas. Shepherding is about improving the paper itself, while the Shepherd maintains that the author is the one doing the writing. The shepherd can guide an author into a more mature understanding of his or her paper. The best shepherds are those that usually have a good understanding of the subject matter they are reviewing. The main goal of a shepherd is to help the author(s) to make the paper the best that it can be given the amount of “shepherding” time they have for the given venue the paper is to be presented at.” Joseph W. Yoder (PLoP community)
3. Shepherding at PLE 2013
Shepherding is an instrument to improve the quality of submissions, help authors connect with the scientific community and strengthen connections within the PLE community. Shepherds are mentors drawn from the Review Committee. Beside the intrinsic value and the insight into interesting papers, mentors will receive special recognition – shepherds will be featured on the special page and receive special badges rewarding their work. Also authors will vote for the best shepherd. The winners will be awarded at the PLE Conference 2013.
A special issue of the online journal eLearning Papers has been released entitled MOOCs and beyond. Editors Yishay Mor and Tapio Koshkinen say the issue brings together in-depth research and examples from the field to generate debate within this emerging research area.
They continue: “Many of us seem to believe that MOOCs are finally delivering some of the technology-enabled change in education that we have been waiting nearly two decades for.
This issue aims to shed light on the way MOOCs affect education institutions and learners. Which teaching and learning strategies can be used to improve the MOOC learning experience? How do MOOCs fit into today’s pedagogical landscape; and could they provide a viable model for developing countries?
We must also look closely at their potential impact on education structures. With the expansion of xMOOC platforms connected to different university networks—like Coursera, Udacity, edX, or the newly launched European Futurelearn—a central question is: what is their role in the education system and especially in higher education?”
The cost of austerity and privatisation
There is growing concern over the consequences of the English (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different policies) government’s cutbacks and privatisation of careers guidance for young people. The International Centre for Guidance Studies reports on a discussion paper called ‘Cost to the Economy of Government Policy on Career Guidance: A Business Case for Funding and Strengthening Career Guidance in Schools‘ from Lizzie Taylor who is an Careers England Affiliate Member. “The report claims that the economic consequence of current government policy on career education is an escalating annual cost to young people in reduced and lost earnings, reaching £676m p.a. in 2018 before dropping back slightly to £665 m p.a.2022. The total cost in reduced and lost earnings to young people in the period 2013 to 2022 is estimated as £3.2bn.”
Open Education 2030
The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) –part of the Joint Research Center of the European commission – is calling upon experts and practitioners to come up with visionary papers and imaginative scenarios on how Open Education in 2030 in Europe might look with a major focus on Open Educational Resources and Practices, in different education sectors.
The foresight scenarios submitted can be normative or descriptive, idealistic or provocative, critical or imaginary, reflective or polemic, imaginative or concrete, comprehensive or selective, general or specific. They should be both inspiring and scientifically sound.
Submissions are free to choose any angle, subject, approach, but they say the future vision and/or scenario should address the key question of how Open Education in 2030 in Europe might look, and include the role of OER.
I wasn’t overoptimistic about the Personal Learning Environments Conference this year. Discussions about PLEs have been subsumed in the hype over MOOCs. And most conferences are struggling with the ongoing recession. But I am delighted that we have received 59 submissions including a number of great proposals for interactive workshops.
The PLE Conference takes place on 10 and 12 July in Berlin.
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Our next programmes will be live from the Online EDUCA Berlin 2012. We will broadcast at 11.00 CET on the 29th/30th of November. Here the stream URL: http://uk2.internet-radio.com:31022/live.m3u
