July 4th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
What is Edupunk?
Stephen Downes offers a definition: "edupunk is student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance." And an anonymous commentator on his post says: "I can’t think of anything more punk than education. For the student, learning gives power to the individual. A society full of mindless drones trained to each do a single task doesn’t really have the mental ability to rebel in meaningful ways. For the teacher, every day is an exercise in punk. You’re almost completely under the control of your coordinator, your principals, your superintendents, your school board, the media. Often, "the man" passes down restrictive rules and decisions that don’t seem to align with what’s best for you or your students. Often, you’re only equipped with sparse resources you’re able to scrap together here and there."
Are you into edupuank. Or is this just a ludicrous social construction by white males the wrong side of 40. The next Emerging Monday Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE radio programme on Monday 7 July will explore the edupunk phenomonon. With interviews,music opinion, poetry and more. LIVE. Guests include Kathryn Greenhill, Michael Caulfield and Martin Weller.
And hopefully we will be welcoming resident edupunk granny Leila back to the programme. Make sure the show is in your diary. We will be broadcasting LIVE from 1900 - 2000 UK Summer Time, 2000 - 2100 Central European Summer Time. To access the programme just click on this link or go to http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u and it shoudl open in your favourite MP3 player. And please tell your friends.
Posted in Bazaar, Sounds of the Bazaar, Wales Wide Web | 1 Comment »
July 3rd, 2008 by Graham Attwell
I don’t agree with centralised curricula and I think curricula should be developed by the community.
But I do agree with the spirit of this report from the Guardian newspaper.
“Children of all ages should study philosophy in school to develop their critical thinking skills, education experts said today….
The book Philosophy in Schools, edited by Dr Michael Hand of the Institute of Education and Dr Carrie Winstanley of Roehampton University, puts forward several arguments for including philosophy in the school curriculum.
“Critical thinkers are people who reason well, and who judge and act on the basis of their reasoning,” Hand says.
“To become critical thinkers, children must learn what constitutes good reasoning and why it’s important - and these are philosophical matters.
“Exposure to philosophy should be part of the basic educational entitlement of all children.”
In philosophy, the quality of arguments and the meanings of words are under constant scrutiny.
Winstanley said teachers could use popular books to initiate philosophical discussions. For example, Where the Wild Things Are could lead into debates on the existence of monsters, and why the main character’s mother sends him to his room without supper.
Winstanley said: “Better than any other subject, philosophy teaches children how to assess reasons, defend positions, define terms, evaluate sources of information and judge the value of arguments and evidence.”
Philosophy also allows younger children to engage in discussion and argument even before they know very much.”
Some funny ideas in the artcile. Children know a lot - even whan they are young. But yes, learninga bout ideas would be a usful start to education!
Posted in Competence Development, Media Literacy, Pedagogy, Wales Wide Web | No Comments »
July 1st, 2008 by Graham Attwell
I think I might have posted this some time ago. But it is worth looking at agin in teh context of developing Personal Learning Environments. I would argue that a central tole for a PLE is for knowledge development and sharing and the knowledge development involves different processes. Jenny Hughes has produced an analysis of different forms of knowledge based on the Welsh language. Whilst English has few words to differentiate knowledge, in Welsh there are at least six different terms for knowledge processes and six different terms for different types of knowledge, each with their own distinct meaning.
The general word for knowledge in Welsh – the translation from the English word knowledge is Gwybodaeth. Even this is not an exact translation. Gwybodaeth means something like ‘knowing-ness’, rather than knowledge.
However, the word Gwybodaeth – or knowing-ness comes in different forms defining different types of knowledge:
- Cynnull (gwybodaeth) – to gather knowledge (as in acquisition) ‘along life’s way’
- Cynhaeaf (gwybodaeth) – to harvest (purposefully) knowledge– or set up systems for harnessing knowledge or organise knowledge
- Cymrodedd (gwybodaeth) - to compromise what you know to accommodate the unknown
- Cynnau (gwybodaeth) - to light or kindle knowledge (in someone else) – can also be used to ‘share knowledge’ but implicit is that it is an active process not simply an exchange of information, which is an entirely different concept.
- Cynllunplas (gwybodaeth) - to design (new) knowledge, paradigm shift
- Cynyddu (gwybodaeth) - to increase or grow (existing) knowledge
I would argue that a PLE should support in some ways all of these different forms of knowing-ness and that such a list represents a useful starting point in defining what we want a PLE to be able to do.
Posted in Mature, PLEs, Wales Wide Web, e-learning 2.0 | No Comments »
June 29th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
I am working on a couple of new papers on Personal Learning Environments. And getting asked by developers what we want them to produce as a PLE. Nota n easy question - in fact I am not sure it is the right question! But here are a few things I think I want my PLE to be able to do.
Access / search
One of the major things we use computers for learning for is accessing and searching information and knowledge. Whilst Google has greatly improved searching it is far form perfect. We need to be able to search inside documents in a way we cannot at the moment. And of course we need to be able to access and search our own computers and possibly those of our peer network. We need to be able to search inside audio and video, which is as yet problematic. And perhaps most importantly we need to be able to find people. Accessing and searching poses many challenges for developers. At present at a relatively simple level of educational repositories we are uncertain as to whether federated search or harvesting offers the best approach.
Aggregate and scaffold
A second use of a Personal Learning Environment could be for aggregating the outcomes of our activity – be it searches for documents, or other media, be it people or be it our own work. Aggregation is more than simply producing a database or of ‘learning objects’. Aggregation should allow us to bring information and knowledge together in a meaningful way. At the same time such a process of aggregation should assist us in scaffolding our knowledge, both in terms of growing on existing knowledge but also in terms of compromising what we know to accommodate the new.
Manipulate
Another possible use of a Personal Learning Environment is to manipulate or rearrange knowledge artefacts. This could be at the simple level of editing text or adding a note or tag. However with the use of different forms of media it may involve more extensive repurposing of such objects. Such repurposing may be for use within a personal knowledge base or may be for (re) publishing or sharing with others.
Another reason for manipulating media artefacts may be to render them usable within different environments and contexts.
Analyse
A PLE should be a place to analyse knowledge. This might involve the use of different tools. Alternatively, or additionally, it might involve the functionality to render information, knowledge and data in forms to allow analysis. It might also include the functionality to share and collaborate in analyses and to compare the results of such analysis with the research of others.
Store
A simple and obvious function for a PLE is to store data and artefacts. However, that storage function may not be so easy as at first thought with an increasing use of different storage media including external drives and web storage. Whilst some data and artefacts may be stored in a personal repository it may be that others will be stored within shared areas.
Reflect
Reflection is a central activity in developing learning. Reflection is particularly critical in an information rich (or information overload) environment. Reflection involves questioning, challenging and seeking clarification and forming and defending opinions and supporting or challenging the opinions of others. A PLE could provide (micro) tools for supporting these processes.
Present
We all have a need to present our ideas, learning and knowledge in different ways and for different purposes. It may be that we merely wish to present some work in progress for feedback from others. We may also wish to present parts of our work for a seminar or for a job application. A PLE could offer the functionality to select and summarise ideas and learning and develop a presentation in different formats according to need. Some forms of presentation may be unique instances – for example a presentation at a conference, others may be more recursive e.g a C.V. Tool also need to take into account that presentation may involve different media.
Represent
The representation of learning and knowledge within a PLE may be seen as a more complex functionality of presentation. Whilst a presentation will draw directly on artefacts within the PLE, a representation will attempt to show the underpinning knowledge structures of such artefacts. A PLE could include tools for visualisation and tools which allow the structures of the knowledge to be shown in a dynamic way. They might also allow the dynamic re-rendering of such structures either through the interrelationship of the artefacts and the underpinning knowledge structures. The representation of knowledge might be an individual activity but might also form part of a wider community activity
Share
That a personal Learning Environment should support individuals in sharing their learning and knowledge almost goes without saying. However, what is shared, when and with whom is far more complex. Tools could be developed, for example, which allow sharing to be the property of any particular artefact. A PLE might also include tools to facilitate collaborative work and collaborative work flows.
Network and people
Networks lie at the heart of a Personal Learning Environment. A PLE might be defined at a personal or individual node in a networked collaborative learning environment. It must be emphasised that a PE is not a document management system (although of course documents may be part of a PLE). PLE tools might allow social representation of networks and networking interchange. Such tools might also allow social association between people, knowledge and artefacts.
Posted in Mature, PLEs, Wales Wide Web, e-learning 2.0 | 1 Comment »
June 28th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
We have a tracking plug in giving us basic stats about who is reading this blog. I’ve never worried too much about how many read it - after all it is my personal space - but I am more interested in the community apsects of trying to build the Pontydysgu web site.
In the last few weeks the numbers of unique visitors and the number of page hits have risen quite dramatically. All very gratifying - people like what we are doing. Maybe - I am getting suspicious.
The stats package tells us which are the most popular stories. As you would expect there are usually the latest posts, things like PLEs feature highly and then there is a very long tail. But for the past three weeks one post above all has dominated the lists. It is called “Hairdressing and Serious Games“. It is an OK post. I wrote it at a conference. It was more for me an excercise to improve my ‘live’ blogging than anything else. It links to a page which allows no access to the game it refers to. So, what is going on? Is the edublogospere being invaded by wanabe hairdressers? Are there hairdressing harvesting robots crawling the web? Or what? Anyone have any ideas? Or any ideas how I can solve this mystery of the hairdressing hits? Or should I just go to the hairdressing companies for advertising?
Funny - haven’t been to a hairdressers for years :).
Posted in Wales Wide Web | 2 Comments »
June 26th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
Yesterdays Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE was pretty popular. According to the stats we had 97 listeners. The problem is that the stats also show that we had quite a few people who were unable to connect becuase we had run out of bandwith (we also had a bandwidth problem from our studio which I will come on to in a bit).
How does the bandwidth work. We broadcast from Bremen in Germany using a DSL connection. We feed to the Community Media Association in Sheffield, UK. They have a commercial operation who sell us bandwidth. Bandwidth for streaming is not cheap. We presently have enough bandwidth for up to 100 listeners at 56kps. We would like to increase this to 200 but can’t really justify the expenditure at present. But we actually buy the bandwidth on a 24/7 basis. And we only use it for 2 hours a month. There is a pretty strong case for bandwidth sharing here. So - if you would like to use our spare badwidth for broadcasting something to do with learning please get in touch. It is a crying shame to see it there unused. And if anyone woudl be interested in coming in with some money we could all benefit from a better service. Just email me on graham10@mac.com. Whilst on the subject if anyone needs help in how to do live streaming radio do drop us a line. However, we use Macs - we do not know the setup for PCs or Linux.
Now for the dedicated techy reader here was our local bandwidth problem. Our present upload capacity is 24kps. This is enough for our stream and for a skype connection. But for yesterdays feature on Cwmglas School I was trying to bring in my colleague Jenny Hughes via a skype to skype line and the school through skype to telephone. And that was just too much. The result is that the stream kept rebuffering. After the show we got on to our ISP website and found we could treble our bandwidth with a package which costs less than we are paying at the moment. The ISP had upgraded their service but not told us and we had to apply on line for the new package. It may be worth you checking whether you can do this - I dare say ISPs are the smae the world over.
Posted in Podcast, Wales Wide Web, podcasting | No Comments »
June 25th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
The podcast version of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE summer special. This edition was produced for the Jisc Emerge conference on Exploring User 2.0: the shape of future users. The conference day theme was digital storytelling so we thought we would talk to users - old and young and from across Europe.
First up in the show is an all too short talk with kids from the computer club at Cwmglas primary school, Swansea. Sadly we ran out of bandwidth and had to curtail the talk but I have arranged to go back to make a podcast shwo at the school in a couple of weeks. And make sure you visit their brilliant website. (NB we are trebling our bandwidth next week).
Next up is John Pallister, who teaches IT in a secondary school talking about his discovery of Web 2.0 tools and his increasing fascination with the on-line world.
John is followed by Guenter Behan from Graz in Austria exoplaining the ideas behind the European funded Aposdle project.
Asley Healey from Glasgow in Scotland tells us about her research into communities of practice.
And Leila Gray - an 83 year old computer fan from Blackwood in Wales explains how she uses Web 2.0 applications. Leila was so good we have invited her to become our resident Sounds of the Bazaar Techno-granny (more about that soon).
And to wrap up taodays programme Margarita Perez Garcia reads us a poem in Spanish.
What a show. And between each item we have great music form an album called Cien Anos Despues by Magnolia Chile available free under a Creative Commons license from the Jamendo web site.
Enjoy. You are listening to Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar - the Sounds of the Summer.
Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE [45:04m]:
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Posted in Audio, Sounds of the Bazaar, Wales Wide Web | No Comments »
June 25th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
A brilliant guest post from my esteemed friend John Pallister.
“I dropped into a bar last night, well actually I listened in to some folks talking about where they were going to go and I decide to have a look there. I lurked around in a corner for a while, then sat down at the bar and watched. It was a bit strange, the bar did not have a barman, it looked to be a help-yourself establishment. People, who I have to admit did look a bit strange, were helping themselves to some strange things and seemed to enjoy jumping around a lot. They all appeared to know each other and were chatting about some music that was playing in the background. I attempted a bit of chit chat, although my natural reserved stopped me from dancing on the bar. As usual, I very quickly cleared the bar with everyone whizzing off with some feeble excuse about having to build a tower! I wandered a bit and got lost. I ended up in an adult area with a scantily clad Avatar jumping around in front of me and singing. Now that does not often happen to me often, was I dreaming? How could a grown man, who has a thousand and one real interests, find himself wandering around in a virtual world?
During the past two years I have been on quite a steep learning curve. The need, as a partner in the MOSEP project, to collaborate with colleagues from across Europe forced me to master Skype; Net-meeting; Eluminate Live; Media Wiki; blogging; social bookmarking and collaborative writing etc. I became engaged in a number of social networks and got into the habit of following people who had similar interests. I soon realised that it did not really matter if, having contributed something to a discussion, forum or a Blog, you did not receive a response. I realised that the vast majority of people were lurkers and that people were in fact reading what I was writing and occasionally, were using it to help them with their thinking. So there was a reason for me to participate and contribute. I also found that writing things down did in fact help to move my own thinking forward. I began to follow and contribute to communities, setting up a group and most recently experimenting with micro-blogging.
In the process of following the Jisc Emerge http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/ community I ended up in Second Life last night. I teleported to a Bar on the Emerge Island. I had to apply all of my Functional ICT skills to master the Second Life interface, I did not really practice my Functional English skills but I did listen to others demonstrating their skills, with one person showing that she recognised her responsibility to move a discussion forward, attempting to engage me in the discussion by employing a range of techniques. The exploding Harveywallbanger was a new one to me! I listened to people agreeing how they would work as a team; reflecting on their own strengths; developing a shared understanding of what it was that they were going to work together to achieve; reflecting on their personal strengths and weaknesses and how they might contribute to the work of the team; etc. I was watching people, in a virtual world practising and developing their Functional and Personal Learning and Thinking skills. Had I managed to keep up with them, I am sure that I would have witnessed more as they built the Tower, although I suspect that they went on to a disco – ‘magic dance ball’?
I am beginning to see more and more potential in these environments for learning – but a bit like Twitter I am overcapacity!
Posted in Blogging, Communities of Practice, Competence Development, MUVEs, Mosep, Wales Wide Web, e-learning 2.0, e-portfolios | No Comments »
June 25th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
An unexpected bonus here - an interview with Helen Beetham about Digital story telling. The story about the interview will follow!
Digital Storytelling [8:13m]:
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Posted in Wales Wide Web, e-learning 2.0 | No Comments »
June 24th, 2008 by Graham Attwell
Been away from the blog for a few days - too much travel. But we are back with another LIVE Sounds of the Bazaar internet radio broadcast. The programme will go out LIVE tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1415 Central European Summer Time (13.15 BST). Interviews, features, music, poetry and more. Guests include John Pallister from Wolsingham School, Gunter Beham from the EU APOSLE project, the kids from Cwmglas primary school in Swansea and Nicola Witton and Scott Wilson from the Emerge ARGOSI project.
Please try and join us for some summer fun. You can listen to the programme by going to http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u in your browser. The programme should stream form your MP3 player of choice.
We will have a chat room operating alongside the programme - go to http://client11.addonchat.com/sc.php?id=302479. The chat will be hosted by Cristina Costa.
And if you would like to come on the programme just drop me an email - graham10@mac.com or skype me. Look forward to talking to you all tomorrow.
Posted in Podcast, Sounds of the Bazaar, Wales Wide Web, podcasting | 1 Comment »
