Archive for the ‘ple’ Category

Knowledge development and Personal Learning Environments

May 16th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

I am in Innsbruck for four days for a meeting of the EU funded research project, Mature-IP. Over the next few days I will try to report on what theproject is doing.

The Mature project has always interseted me in its approach to Personal Learning Environments. Whilst most projects based on PLEs have looked at learning within schools and univeristies, Mature looks at knowledge maturing processes in work.

And the project has adopted a user based approach working with a number of different user groups, in the UK from the Careers services, in developing and iterating a PLE based on knowledge development services. The project has also developed a series of knowledge indicators, based on these services.

Is it working? It is a little early to tell. But the project acknowledges the importance of different forms of learning leading to knowledge development and sharing in the workplace and also takes account of differences in context. The services developed have been based on the idea of represneting, modellinga nd reseeding knowledge delopment or maturing processes as seen in the diagramme above. Twenty seven services have been developed to date and can be combined in what are being called insubstatiations to take account of such contexts. I realise these may seem somewhat abstract but they have served in bridging between social and educational researchers working on the project and software develers. These services are:

Representation Services:

Content

  • Content metric service: Provides a wrapper for encapsulating various content metric implementations
  • Classification service: Classifies resources to a given set of categories based on their content. Classification can be improved by the help of user feedback
  • Clustering Service: Groups items regarding a special feature

Structure

  • Task Similarity Service: Computes the similarity between tasks
  • Tag Mortality Analysis Service: analyses tags / concepts and their activity to predict their death
  • Concept Relationship Analysis Service: Analyzes concept hierarchy and usage of concept for annotations to derive recommendations for adding broader/narrower relationships
  • oSKOS Analysis Service: analyzes a SKOS ontology for potential redundant or missing information

Usage

  • Usage Logging Service: collects usage data from the user’s interaction with the MATURE systems
  • Process Tracking Service: logs process and task execution

Model Services

User

  • User Modeling Service: Detects a user’s knowledge from his or her usage data
  • Topical User Modeling Service: Provides an aggregated topical profile of a person

Task

  • Process Monitoring Service: Provides the means to query and browse log data provided by the Process Tracking Service in aggregated form
  • Process Model Refinement Service: Compares the modelled process with the actual process executions and suggests improvements on the process model based on it

Resource

  • Resource Model Service: Describes resources based on usage data
  • Document Similarity Service: Derives the textual similarity between two documents
  • Resource Quality Profile: Creates a qualitative profile for each resource

Reseeding Services

Reseeding of Knowledge about contents

  • Quality Based Resource Recommendation: Provides a set of ranked resources based on the qualitative status of the resource and quality requirements of the user
  • Context Aware Notification Service: Provides information about activities related to artefacts
  • Reseeding of Knowledge about SemanticsTag Recommendation Service: Provides tag recommendations to achieve a consistent personal and organisational tag vocabulary
  • Keyword Recommendation Service: Provides a list of synonyms and hyponyms for tags
  • Ontology Gardening Recommendation Service: provides recommendation for improving a SKOS ontology based on the ontology itself and information on its application

Reseeding of Knowledge about Processes

  • Case-based Resource Recommendation Service: suggests resources based on resource-use in historical process executions.
  • Historical Case Service: searches for historical cases based on a given input

Reseeding of Knowledge about People

  • Expertise Analytics Service: Provides an aggregated overview and comparison of available and requested expertise based on tag assignments and search query analysis within a certain timeframe
  • People Ranking Service: Provides a ranked list of people that are relevant for a given topic
  • Expert Ranking Service: Based on past tag assignments (user-document-tag triple marked with a timestamp), this service recommends knowledgeable colleagues working on a specific topic
  • People Awareness Service: Based on a user/person’s profile, this service recommends other persons with a similar profile

Widgets and Mashups for Personal and Institutional Technologies

May 14th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

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.”

Na czym polegją Masowe Otwarte Kursy Online (MOKO)?

May 11th, 2011 by Ilona Buchem

Jakiś czas temu pisałam o Masowych Otwartych Kursach Online (MOKO) czyli Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) i o swoich spostrzerzeniach jako uczestniczka kursu #PLENK11 organizowanego przez  Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Dave Cormier i Rita Kop.

Od początku maja uczestniczę  w nowym MOKO – #OPCO11. Jest to pierwszy MOKO niemieckojęzyczny,  organizowany przez  Claudia Bremer, Ralph Müller, Detlef Krömker, David Weiß i Jochen Robes. Jak sami organizatorzy #OPCO11 przyznają, kurs ten jest wzorowany na poprzednikach z Kanady, szczególnie na kursach #CCK11 i #PLENK11

Tak jak pisałam w poprzednim wpisie na ten temat:

„Idea MOOK’a oparta jest na konektywistycznej teorii uczenia się, która definiuje uczenie się jako proces tworzenia połączeń pomiędzy różnymi elementami, odkrywaniem wzorów w chaosie wszechświata (Siemens, 2005).”

Ale w jaki sposób organizowane są MOKO? Jaką mają strukturę? Jakie są ich główne elementy dydaktyczne? Oto moja pierwsza próba usystematyzowania:

Atrybuty MOKO:

MOKO są:

  • Otwarte dla osób: Każdy może w nich uczestniczyć, nie ma ograniczeń co do ilości uczestników, każdy może coś zainicjować, np. stworzyć wirtualną grupe albo zmobilizować lokalne spotkanie.
  • Otwarte dla treści: Każdy może aktywnie uczestniczyć w konwersacji, tworzyć teksty i multimedialne artefakty, wyrażać swoje myśli i to w dowolnym języku (np. poprzez pisanie bloga w swoim języku i połączeniem go z kursem za pomącą hashtagunp. #PLENK11).
  • Otwarte dla techniki: Każdy może połączyć się z kursem poprzez dowolne narzędzie sieciowe, np. wiki, blog, bookmarking, wystarczy użyć hashtagu – organizatorzy (a często też i inni uczestnicy) filtrują zasoby internetowe i agregują rozsypane po sieci narzędzia i miejsca nauki.
  • Owarte dla przbiegu nauki: W kursie nie ma specjanie wytyczonych dróg nauki. Każdy uczestnik kursy kieruje sam swoim procesem uczestniczenia w kursie. Każdy obiera na nowo swoją droge w tej ciągle re-konfigurującej się sieci połączonych narzędzi, wirtualnych miejsc, uczestników, treści i materiałów do nauki. Każdy może dołączyć się i opuścić kurs w wybranym prze siebie momencie.
  • Otwarte dla rezultatów nauki: Każdy sam decyduje, czego chce się nauczyć i jakie wyniki chce osągnąć. Rezultaty nie są ważne tylko pod koniec kursu, lecz w kazdym momencie jego przebiegu, np. sukcesem może być zbudowanie relacji z wybranymi uczestnikami kursu w sensie osobistej sieci nauki (personal learning network), która umożliwia wymianę doświadczeń i nowe spojrzenie na omawiane tematy.
  • Interaktywne: Kursy polegają na interakcji i wymianie z innymi uczestnikami, interakcji z treściami i materiałami, które udostępniane lub stwarzane są przez organizatorów i przez uczestników, oraz na interakcji techniki (linki, hastags itp.)
  • Rozproszone: W kursie używane są zarówno przez organizatorów jak i przez uczestników różne miejsca i narzędzia w sieci. Wszystkie indywidualne blogi, wikis, mikroblogi, grupy, fora itp. są uważane za część kursu. Część tych rozproszonych sieciowych miejsc i narzędzi agregowana jest na głównej stronie kursu, ale tylko w celu stworzenia orientacji, w przeciwieństwie do stworzenia centralnej platformy nauki.

Centralne elementy dydaktyczno-techniczne

  • Główna strona: Każdy z kursów ma główną stronę, na której aggregowane są informacje dotyczące ogólnych przebiegu kursu, uczestników, tematów i zasobów oraz linki do innych miejsc, w ktrórych przebiega uczenie się.
  • Webinary: Każdy kurs stwarza możliwość wymiany i przekazu treści na żywo poprzez webinary w regularnych odstępach czasowych (przeważnie raz w tygodniu). Przeważnie do webinarów zapraszani są eksperci, którzy prezentują i dyskutują. Uczestnicy nie tylki słuchają i oglądają, ale mogą też brać udział bardziej aktywnie poprzez stawianie pytań na czacie, kolaboratywne robienie notatek, wymiane linków i zasobów itp. Każdy webinar jest nagrywany i dokumentowany.
  • Newsletter: Uczestnicy tworzą regularnie (przeważnie raz w tygodniu) streszczenia poprzednich dni, agregują wpisy na blogi i tweety na Twitterze i wysyłają te informacje do zarejestrowanych uczestników.
  • Indywidualne narzędzia uczestników: Blogi, wikis, mindmaps, twitter – wstystkie te narzędzia umożliwiają uczestnikom stworzenie własynch miejsc do nauki poprzez opis swoich refleksji, dyskusje z innymi uczestnikami, porządkowanie zasobów, wspólne tworzenie artefaktów itp.
  • Twitter: używany jest w każdym kursie do budowania więzi między uczestnikami, dystrybucji informacji oraz wymiany opinii, zasobów i uczestniczeniu w dyskusjach, np. podczas webinarów.

No tak, to takie pierwsze spojrzenie „z grubsza”. Czy czegoś zapomniałam? Co należy jeszcze dodać?

Dziękuję za uzupełnienia!

Personalised Radio Ciphers: internet-radio and augmented social media for transformational learning of disadvantaged young people

May 11th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

This is proposal submitted by Andrew Ravenscroft, Graham Attwell, David Blagbrough and Dirk Stieglitz for the PLE2011 conference in Southampton has been accepted. We are going to have a lot of fun. And remember you can join us too. Whilst paper submissions are closed you can still submit proposals for posters pecha keucha or the media competition until June 11th.

Introduction: Designing personalized new media spaces to support transformational and emancipatory learning

Relatively recent research into, and definitions of, personalised learning environments (e.g. van Harmelen, 2008) have proposed new technological configurations or learning design patterns. These typically harmonise individual learner agency and initiative with a developing ecology of open web services and tools. This is the PLEs from an ‘alternative learning technology perspective’. Another and complementary way to view personalisation, that has a history beyond relatively recent technological developments, is to view ‘personlisation as practice’. In this sense, personalisation is rooted in the ‘deep’ matching and development of learners interests, experiences and motivations with their chosen informal or formal learning trajectories, that may be realized through personalised technologies. This is a psycho-social approach to personalisaton and learning technology design and use, that conceives of learning as something that grows out from the learner, rather than something that is acquired from some pre-structured, ‘external’ and ‘imposed’ curricula.

This position is particularly important when we are attempting to find technology-enabled ways to engage, retain and support the learning of disadvantaged people who are excluded, or at risk of exclusion, from traditional learning paths and trajectories. Arguably, this problem is most severe in the burgeoning numbers of NEETs (Not in Education Employment and Training) throughout the UK and Europe. Addressing the needs of these growing communities requires new and radical approaches to learning, learning design and technology-enabled practice. One foundation for a radical and technology-enabled pedagogy for disadvantaged groups is the groundbreaking work of Paulo Freire (1970).

Applying Friere to PLE design: Technical reformulation of ciphers

In Paulo Freire’s seminal work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (Freire, 1970), he emphasized the importance of critical engagement in and analysis of broader societal ‘cycles’ and their effects. One way to do this is through using lived culture, and praxis (action that is informed by values) as the foundational elements for developing circles that promote transformational learning. These ideas have recently been taken up within the non hierarchical, shared, creative, inclusive, safe and supported spaces called “ciphers” – which have emerged from the urban youth culture particularly around hip hop music (Wiliams, 2009).

We are currently using this cipher concept as a metaphor for designing and developing RadioActive, a hybrid of internet-radio and augmented social media platform to support the transformational learning of disadvantaged young people.

The RadioActive pilot

This presentation will describe the design, piloting and evaluation of RadioActive with NEETs in the London Borough of Hackney. The radio-social media platform is being co-designed with these NEETs and their support actors (such as youth workers and parents) in Hackney (in London). A key aspect is that the ‘going live’ aspect acts as a catalyst for community engagement and cohesion, linked to related social media activity. Put simply, the internet-radio gives a presence, real-time narrative and an energy that drives participation, interaction and content creation.

This is an innovative and participative broadcasting model that combines Open Source or easily affordable technology to create ‘the communities’ radio platform. This deliberately fuses, inspired by Web 2.0 trends, traditional distinctions between broadcaster/program planner and listener/consumer. The holistic design concept is an edutainment platform and hard to reach community combined, via the cipher approach, into a connected ‘live entity’ rather than the community being seen as a separate audience that is broadcast to.

The central idea is that this radio cipher provides the means to initially engage and retain NEETs, who can then be exposed to and participate in informal learning activities that lead to the development of skills and competencies that prepare them for Further Education or work. They develop both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills through RadioActive. The softer ones relate to personal expression, the development of self-confidence and self-esteem, and the development of collaborative working skills. The harder ones involve the development of concrete digital literacy, media production, communication and organizational skills, that can exploited in other education or employment related activities. Similarly, their artefacts and competencies are recorded (e.g. in an eportfolio) or made public (e.g on the web) in ways that can be presented to potential Educators or Employers.

The proposed conference activities

This contribution will follow the collaborative and praxis driven spirit of this project and the PLE conference, through incorporating 2 related activities:
1. A presentation linked to the archive of the pilot radio show;
2. Mashup madness or a community in harmony? Live RadioActive show and DJ set during a social event at the conference, with RadioActive DJ’s mixing a set based on 1 or 2 favorite songs suggested by each delegate.

References

Friere, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum Publishing.

Van Harmelen, H., Design trajectories: four experiments in PLE implementation, Interactive Learning Environments, 1744-5191, Volume 16, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 35 – 46.

Wiliams, D. (2009). The critical cultural cypher: Remaking Paulo Frieire’s cultural circles using Hip Hp culture. International, Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 2, 1, pp 1-29.

An update on the PLE2011 conference

May 9th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

I am extremely busy today but time for a quick catch up on the Personal Learning Environments Conference 2011, being held from July 11- 13 in Southampton UK.

Last years conference in Barcelona attracted nearly 90 submissions, far in excess of what we expected. This year we had less, with 65 papers, symposia and workshops. I don’t think the lesser number was due to reduced interest, but rather that in the present economic climate, many researchers are finding it hard to gain funding for conferences (I will write a further blog on how we can deal with this). I suspect also that beautiful though Southampton may be, it does not match Barcelona in terms of conference pulling power! We have just finished the review procedure with all the attendant difficulties of establishing shared criteria and quality standards for reviews and persuading overworked colleagues tos pare the time for an unpaid for activity.

Out of the 65 submissions we have rejected two for not meeting the submission guidelines. A further four are ‘borderline’ and we are further reviewing those proposals. Happily the rest are considered good enough fro acceptance.

The good news – in general the standard of submissions is much higher this year than last year. I suspect there are two main reasons for this – firstly an improved common understanding in our communities around the idea of Personal Learning Environments. Last year we had problems in that in many proposals it was hard to relate the focus of the paper to the idea of PLEs – this year that relationship is much clearer. The second reason is that we extended the length of abstracts this year and that seems to have improved the quality.

But I still get the feeling that a number of submissions do not do justice to the ideas and research on which they are based. I do not find it easy writing proposal abstracts and wonder if there is some mileage in firstly a little collective thinking in what we are looking for in a proposal and how we can convey that to potential contributors and secondly a more inclusive and supporting procedure to help those – especially ‘emerging’ researchers in writing quality proposals. Any ideas welcome.

PLE Conference Keynotes

April 26th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

The PLE2011 conference being held in Southampton from 11-13 July has announced its (un) keynote speakers – Cristina Costa, Scott Wilson, Riina Vuorikari and Les Carr.

According to the conference web site they will provide key insights and understanding of what makes a PLE, from personal experience, through individual analysis and with thoughtful speculations on the future directions of this important field. “Each of our four keynotes will offer a slightly different perspective on Personal Learning Environments and each guarantees to ensure that their sessions attain the high level of interactions and audience engagement which was established with the first conference in Barcelona.”

PLE2011 Conference

January 31st, 2011 by Graham Attwell

Last year Pontydysgu helped organise the first Perosnal Learning environment’s Conference, PLE2010, held in Barcelona. And, to our delight, it was a huge sucess, as much for teh open format and exchanget of ideas as the subject, I suspect.

And although, we had envisaged the conference being a one off, we have been encouraged by the feedback to organise a second conference this year. Our good friends Hugh Davis, Lisa Harris and Su White at the University of Southampton in the UK have kindly offered to host the conference. And here is the call for contributions. As last year, we particularly welcome interactive and participative formats for sessions. The conference web site can be accessed here.

Call for Papers: The PLE Conference 2011

Following the highly successful inaugural event in Barcelona (#PLE_BCN), the next PLE Conference will be held at the University of Southampton, UK (#PLE_SOU) from July 11th  to 13th 2011, and will have a lively social  programme as well as a highly interactive and innovative technical programme.

The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise. Whilst the conference includes a traditional research paper strand, we also encourage proposals for sessions in different formats including workshops, posters, debates, cafe sessions and demonstrations aiming to sustain the dynamic and interactive discussion environment established by the opening event in Barcelona in 2010.

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) includes the tools, communities, and services that constitute individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals. This represents a shift away from the traditional model of learning, and towards a model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of online and offline resources that they select and organise. To gain something of the flavour of last year¹s conference search for #PLE_BCN and see http://pleconference.citilab.eu/

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline Saturday 26th March

The conference organisers welcome 500-800 word abstracts for full or short research papers. Submissions for other types of presentation, such as workshops, symposia, demonstrations and installations are also encouraged. These can be submitted electronically via ConfTool http://pleconf.cs.uni-paderborn.de/ . The full guidelines for submissions can be downloaded here.

Conference themes

Conference themes include (but are not limited to):

  • Theories and frameworks for Personal Learning Environments
  • Technologies and software for developing Personal Learning Environments
  • PLEs in Practice (case studies, approaches to using PLEs)
  • Educational institutions, change and PLEs
  • Pedagogical approaches to managing personal learning
  • The development and management of Personal Learning Networks
  • Mobile PLEs and augmented reality
  • Supporting informal and contextual learning
  • Using PLEs in organisations
  • Using PLEs for Work Based Learning
  • Mash-up PLEs
  • Presentation formats
  • Future visions:  Quo vadis PLE?

The PLE conference is especially looking for originality and relevancy of ideas and for creative proposals, in both form and content. Formats for publication and communication of research are two different things! Independently of the publication format you decide to contribute, full research paper, workshop etc., the organising committee encourages interactive and creative ways of communicating research.

Hence, we invite you to submit your contribution in the publication format you prefer and select your preference regarding the type of presentation  you wish to make (e.g.: round table discussion, bring your own laptop, cafe session, etc.) in the submission form. Once the review of papers is concluded, presentations will be organised by topics and session chairs will start liaising with participants regarding the organisation of their session. Our goal is to create spaces for meaningful discussions. In short, the purpose is to create opportunities for delegates to interact with each other and achieve real communication. We aim to promote dialogue and interactivity throughout the conference.

We welcome submissions and ideas for videos, photo collages, podcasts,  cartoons, posters – or any other kind of artifacts you can think of. In celebration of User Generated Content we will have a Mediacast Contest during the PLE Conference 2011 with awards for the best three mediacast productions on Personal Learning Environments.

A separate call for pechakucha sessions will be released shortly.

Review Process

All proposals will be subject to a peer review process and all proposals accepted will be published electronically with an ISSN number. In addition to the proceedings, we intend to publish selected conference papers in special editions of the journals that support the conference.
Please note that all submissions should be licensed under a Creative Commons licence.

Each registered participant may submit one full or short paper contribution to the conference, although further proposals in different formats are welcome.

Deadlines

The deadline for proposals is March 26th, 2011.
You will be notified if your submission has been accepted by April 30th.
For those submitting proceedings papers, the deadline for the receipt of the full paper is May 28th.

Final Submission Information

Full Papers
If your abstract is accepted, the full paper should be between 3000 and 5000 words. words (including references, tables and figures).

Short Papers/ Extended Abstracts
The short paper proposals are especially designed to encourage the presentation of work in progress. Short papers should be between 1500 words and 2500 words.

Workshops, Posters, Symposia, Demonstration, Installations, BringYourOwnLaptop sessions and other Formats.
Please submit your proposal indicating that you intend to make a contribution in one of these alternative formats.

Declaring our Learning

January 18th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

I am ultra impressed by the idea behind the Declare-It web app. The site says

Declare-It is a tool that assists you in creating, tracking and being held accountable to your goals. For every declaration you make, Declare-It requires you to add supporters. Supporters are notified of your declaration and receive progress reports along your journey. If you start to fall off track, your supporters are sent an ALERT message. They can send you comments and even add incentives to help you stay motivated.

Sadly, Declare-It is a commercial site. Although it allows a ten day free trial, it then costs $9.99 per month. And I don’t honestly see enough people being prepared to pay that money for the site to gain critical mass. But the idea is simple enough and could easily be adopted or extended to other web tools.

Essentially all it is saying is that we set our own learning goals and targets and use our Personal Learning Networks for support. Then rather than just selecting friends to monitor our progress and receive alerts when we slip behind, as in the Declare-It app, we could select friends from our Personal Learning Network to support our learning and receive alerts when we achieve something or need collaboration.

Of course many of this will do that already using all kinds of different tools. My learning is work based, and most of this work is undertaken in collaboration with others – using email, forums or very often skype. Having said that I have  never really got on with any of the myriad task setting (lists) and tracking tools and astikll  tend to write my lists on the back of envelopes.

But rather than a separate web site like Declare-IT (which admittedly does have some Twitter and Facebook integration), I need some way of integrating Declare-It type functionality with my everyday workflow. A WordPress plug-in could be wonderful, particularly for project work.

Personal Learning Environments, division and interpersonal dissent

December 21st, 2010 by Graham Attwell

Norm Friesen has taken a look at the use of commercial and social software applications for Personal Learning Environments in a paper published in First Monday and entitled ‘Education and the Social Web. Connective learning and the Commercial Imperative‘.

The major thrust of his argument is that services such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg or even Google are designed around the interests of advertisers rather than of users.

Particularly interesting is Friesen’s point  that such services deny any negative responses or the ability to express disapproval or dissent. So whilst the Facebook ‘like ‘ button populates thousands of web sites there is no such button for dislike. Equally Twitter tells you when you have followers, but not when someone has chosen no longer to follow you. The business model of commercial social networks is based on advertising, assisted by data collection and powerful tracking and analysis capabilities.

Freiesen concludes that the pattern of suppressing division, negativity and interpersonal dissent runs counter to common models for pedagogic engagement and interaction. Commercial software services by design serve other priorities than learning, indeed they are often opposed to it.

Friesen reiterates the social process of education, but does not see knowledge as being exclusively embodies in networks of connection an affiliation, in the way some researchers have.

It is hard to argue with much that Norm Friesen says in this paper. However, there are other models for social software applications, other than advertising. Indeed, the last sic months has seen increasing numbers of previously free applications launching premium services (either for extra fiunctionaility or file space or to get rid of the advertisements!).

Nevertheless I have always been wary of the idea of basing a Personal Learning Environment on Facebook or Google.  Facebook offers far too little user control. Google, on the other had, produces some excellent software tools, which can be used as part of a PLE without long term dependencies, I think.

Norm Friesen limited himself to commercial providers in his paper. However applications like Buddypress and Elgg, both available as Open Source, have growing social functionality. Furthermore for those users willing to learn a little, they offer plenty of opportunities for designing their use. It may be that it is that process of design which is mots important in developing a Personal Learning Environment. I have written before of how the PLE itself should be seen as outcome of learning as well as a process. Probably the major failure of commercial social software services is that they deny the user that involvement in the design process.

And going beyond the issues Norm raises, the issue of control is once more bubbling near the surface. Whilst most institutions have been looking at the possible cost advantages of using cloud services, the service providers have shown though the wikileaks saga how susceptible they are to governmental and commercial pressures.

Isaac Asimov on education in the future

December 12th, 2010 by Graham Attwell


I picked up this video from Jim Groom. Jim says “erchache2000 shared the link to the above video of Isaac Asimov talking with Bill Moyers in “The World of Ideas” back in 1988. His fascinating discussion of the idea of computer mediated instruction being anything but dehumanizing. I love Asimov’s idea that rather reproducing a model of privilege that had been available only to the few, i.e. 1-on-1 instruction, is now available to the many: the one-to-one amongst the many. He gets beautifully at how the internet allows for a radically different paradigm for thinking about education, while at the same time touches on the thrust behind unschooling when talking about not only allowing, but encouraging, kids to follow their own interests. What’s more, Asimov seems so cool in this video, I love his final comment “why not?…why not?” Spoken like a true believer, I love that about this video, it’s speculative, visionary, and in many ways idealistic—what we don’t seem to realize is we have that platform, and it’s time for us to use it with some of that vision.”

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    News Bites

    2012 Horizon report

    An advance copy of the the NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition, due to be launched on June 14, identifies mobile devices and apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less. Game-based learning and personal learning environments are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; and augmented reality and natural user interfaces emerged in the third horizon of four to five years.


    OER Quality

    A new project is attempting to define quality standards  for open educational resources in higher education; this is part of the OER Quality Project, a joint research between the universities of Barcelona, Santiago de Chile and the University of London.

    The researchers for this project are lecturers and academic librarians and aim to define a set of quality standards and develop a good practices guide both for content design and for  indexing open educational resources in institutional repositories.

    They are looking for university lecturers, readers or professors (distance learning lecturers welcome too) willing to answer 2 surveys  (20 minutes each) and to evaluate a set of OERs, according to certain guidelines and criteria, which will take 30 minutes to answer. To participate, please register here.


    Hangouts on Air

    Personally I am not a great fan of Google+, although as Google increasingly integrates its different services it is hard to avoid. But, as Stephen Downes points out in the ever valuable Oldaily, citing an original blog post by David Andrade, “by far and away the best thing about Google+ is the Hangout feature, essentially a way to have a videoconference with ten of your friends. This latest upgrade allows you to broadcast your Hangouts to as large an audience as you want. “With Hangouts on Air, you will be able to broadcast yourself publicly to the entire world, see how many viewers you have, and even record and reshare your broadcast. The public recording will be uploaded to your YouTube channel and to your original Google+ post.”

    With free skype video calls limited to two people and the increasing cost of proprietary synchronous elearning platforms like Blackboard Collaborate, Hangouts could become the system of choice for open online courses.


    Gadgets and widgets

    The Dutch SURFnet have announced the ‘Edu-Socializing Seminar’, to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on June 12th and 13th. They say “Gadget and widget technology is gaining momentum in the Research and Educational community. Projects like the Role Project, Apache Rave, Sakai OAE and OpenConext implement and deploy these technologies, showcasing the possibilities and benefits of such loosely coupled and distributed environments. The projects address a wide variety of needs from within the community like, among others, personalized learning environments, mashing web and social content, distributed learning and online collaborations.

    The event seeks to explore trends and foster these developments internationally, by bringing together experts from different fields into one event and joining them in a community. With interactive sessions the workshop wants to enable sharing of ideas and knowledge. At the same time the event wants to trigger new developments. With dedicated breakout sessions, common challenges can be addressed and solutions can be targeted.”

    More details on the seminar wiki page.


    ECER 2010

    The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

    On the ECER 2010 website.

    Taccle handbook for teachers order form

    Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

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