Technology WILL NOT save education

August 31st, 2010 by Graham Attwell

Another article reporting from the European Conference on Educational Research held in Helsinki last week.

Most of my time at the conference was spent working on our Amplified project, using multi media and social software to turn the conference outwards and improve the experience for face to face delegates. More reports on this work later in the week.

But I did get to go to two sessions. The first was a symposium entitled ‘Technology WILL NOT save education – views on teaching learning and researching in the Digital Age’ .

Here is the abstract:

Deeply immersed in the Society of Knowledge great efforts, including the use of educational technology have been carried out in order to improve education. Changes in the cultural contexts where education takes place have posed new questions both in educational practice and research. Very often changes in educational practices are subject to factors within the context where they are  pursued and it is probable that the results vary depending on different cultural factors.  Within the field of Educational Technology it becomes essential to manage cultural change in order to make technology happen.

Educational institutions have to provide answers to all agents involved in the educational field: a change of methodology is needed and, in many instances, this will depend upon cultural factors. Thus, cultural contexts have to be taken into consideration in their policies and activities.  Cultural change does not come with technology but with the transformation of educational practices and the revision of  traditional  methodologies. The role of educators is key the same as the position of educational institutions which have to provide the means to facilitate cultural change.

The emergent social networks and Web 2.0 applications have given way to a great variety of educational possibilities which may help consider students, not under traditional categories of race, class and gender but instead taking into account local and global contexts and diversity. Web 2.0 applications are powerful socialization and communication tools that support the process of construction of knowledge and can have an incredible educational potential for instruction.

This symposium seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of research in different fields which provides an outlook from different points of view of teaching, learning and researching in the Digital Age. Its departing point is the assumption that technology will NOT save Education unless cultural change takes place.

The different papers  in this simposium try to account from different viewpoints for aspects which aim at improving education. Thus,  the first paper discusses the need of  networking culture in different disciplines regarding approaches and practices of researchers which have made use of web technologies.   The importante of networking is also revised as a catalyst of social and educational change. The second paper deals with the construction of a new model of curriculum more in relation to new learning needs and approaches  and the eminent role that educators play on it, especially considering their adaptation to change and their practices within teaching and learning processes. The third  paper deals with the use of Personal learning Environments as systems that help learners be in control of their own learning process by setting goals sharing ideas and  managing learning content in both individual and group basis. The last of the papers faces the educational potentialities of Web 2.0 applications as powerful socialization and communication tools that can support processes of knowledge construction and can have an incredible educational potential for Foreign Language instruction.

I chaired the symposium, with my good friends Linda Casteneda, Ricardo Torres and Maria Perifanou presenting and Mar Camacho acting as discussant.

We spent a lot of time thinking about the format, not wishing to do the usual 3 25 minutes presnetations with a short time for questions and discussion. Instead we reverted the usual order, with Mar opening by presenting a brief overview of the ideas behind the symposium and then inviting delegates to provide a brief opinion about our approach.

We then had three ten minute presentations from Linda, Ricardo and Maria. Linda presented research she had undertaken at the University of Murcia in Spain. Basically, despite efforts to introduce technology into the curriculum for student teachers at the university, she concluded little had changed in terms of teaching and learning practice. Her conclusion was that technology on its own will not change anything. To make effective use of new technologies requires fundamental curriculum reform and the development and adoption of new pedagogies for teaching and learning. Ricardo and Maria both reflected on instances of effective practice, drawn from their own work. Ricardo looked at the development of Personal Learning Environments in a programme he teaches in Barcelona. And Maria reported on the development and use of webquests for teaching Italien in Thessaloniki. It had been our intention to group the different issues raised by delegates and speakers and use them to break into smaller discussion groups. However in the end the range of issues and the different levels of experience of participants led us to move towards a single group discussion.

The discussion was successful in terms of the active involvement of nearly all the participants. However it tended to be unfocused. A series of different issues were raised. One prevalent concern was that the rigidity of assessment regimes prevented innovation in pedagogic approaches. Another was the resistance of school and institutional management to change. A third was the attitudes of students, who while expecting the use of technology in teaching and learning, were still reluctant to take control of their own learning processes in the way required for effective use of new pedagogic approaches.

Other issues included digital literacies and teachers dispositions towards using technology for teaching. Whilst they were happy to use it for preparing lessons, for presentations and for administrations, they were less comfortable to use it for teaching and learning in practice.

One interesting issue was who should “set the agenda” for change. One participant was concerned that the way technology was being introduced in education was taking away ‘agency’ from teachers in the classroom.

It was a enjoyable session. But whilst most seemed open to and supportive of our hypothesis, there was little consensus on a way forward.

#ECER2010 Amplified – the build up

August 23rd, 2010 by Graham Attwell

Some four or so weeks ago I wrote about the work Pontydysgu are doing with the European Educational Research Association, EERA, around their annual conference, The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). The conference starts this Wednesday in Helsinki and will involve hundreds of sessions with some 2000 delegates organised through 26 different networks.

ECER has an extensive web site but has until now not ventured into the Web 2.0 field. We are supporting them with the use of social software and video to enhance the conference experience for delegates, to promote knowledge sharing between delegates from different research areas in education, to produce a multimedia record of the conference and to help those unable to attend in person to participate in at least some of the conference events.

We have already agreed and publicised a conference hash tag – #ECER2010. We have set up a twitter account – ECER_EERA and have slowly gathered 42 followers. We have a Flickr group. We have installed plug-ins to the ECER web site which is run on the Open Source Typo3 Content management system to integrate the flickr and twitter streams.

And now it is time for the live conference. We are planning three main activities this week.

Video streaming

We are streaming the opening ceremony and the four keynote sessions. Because the keynotes are being held in parallel sessions, we have set up two different streaming channels. You can access the video channels here.

Channel 1

Wednesday 25 August

08:30 – 09:00 (Finnish time) 07:30 – 10:30 (CET) – Opening Ceremony

17:45 – 18:45 (Finnish time) 18:45 – 19:45 (CET) Keynote 1 – Floya Anthias Floya Anthias is Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Roehampton University, London.

Friday 27 August

13:30 – 14:30 (Finnish time) 14:30 – 15:30 (CET) – Keynote 2 – Lisbeth Lundahl Professor at the Department of Child and Youth Education, Special Education and Counselling, Teacher Education Faculty at Umeå.

Channel 2

Wednesday 25 August

17:45 – 18:45 (Finnish time) 18:45 – 19:45 (CET) Keynote 2 – Marie Verhoeven Marie Verhoeven is Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. At ECER 2010, she will analyse how cultural domination through schooling process has to be rethought, in a context which combines cultural and normative pluralism, globalized international policies and normative discourses, and “post-massification” equality of opportunity policies (often articulated with educational “quasi-market” mechanisms).

Friday 27 August

13:30 – 14:30 (Finnish time) 14:30 – 15:30 (CET) – Keynote 4 – Fazal Rizvi Fazal Riszvi will discuss issues of diversity in education, and how the various transnational processes require them to be conceptualized in radically new ways The title of his lecture is “Re-thinking Issues of Diversity within the Context of an Emergent Transnationalism”.

Conference Internet radio

We will be producing three LIVE internet radio broadcasts from our radio station, Sounds of the Bazaar.. The shows will be broadcast from 1200 – 1230 Central European Time on Wednesday 25 August and Thursday 26 August and from 1100 – 1130 Central European Time on Friday 27 August (Don’t forget, if you are listening from the UK it is one hour earlier). You can access the shows by pointing to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u in your browser. This will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice.

Videos and iTunes U

We will be making some thirteen videos at the conference – twelve interviewing conveners from the different networks and the thirteenth a mash up of vox pops from delegates. And we are setting up an iTunes U site to access all the different outputs.

It is going to be a busy week. We hope you will be able to join us for at least part of the fun.

The European Conference on Educational Research Amplified!

July 25th, 2010 by Graham Attwell

I’ve just read a neat article by John Popham on “How to amplify your event“. I actually didn’t realise what the word amplify meant in this context. But Pontydysgu is working with the European Education Research Association to ‘amplify’ the European Conference on Educational Research this year. The conference, as far as I know the largest Educational Conference in Europe with some 2200 delegates, in being held in Helsinki from 25 – 27 August. The theme of the conference is “Education and Cultural Change.”

One obvious question is what do we want to achieve? Basically we have three aims. One is to enhance the confernce experience for those attending. ECER is run by some 27 or so networks and with so many attending, it can be difficult to keep in touch with everything going on – or even to just find old friends. We hope the use of technology will help get people together, find old and new friends and allow discussion of ideas – before, during and after the conference. Secondly we hope to start to open the conference outwards – to involve those not able to attend face to face and to enhance connections with the wider communities of education research. And thirdly we are trying to build a small history of the conference – not just through papers – but through recording people’s reflections of their experiences and learning.

Now down to the technology – what are we doing?

Firstly we have agreed a hashtag – #ECER2010 and are encouraging delegates to use the hashtag.

We have set a twitter account – EERA_ECER – and are sending out regular tweets (followers very welcome). We have also added a plug in to the ECER web site to accumulate our tweets – http://www.eera-ecer.eu/ecer/ecer2010/twitter-news/?no_cache=1

We have also set up an ECER2010 group on Flickr and are asking delegates to add their photos to that group. Just go to http://www.flickr.com/groups/ecer2010/ and join the group.

We are planning to stream a number of the keynote sessions – more details soon.

We will be making short videos with twelve of the different network conveners as well as vox pops with conference delegates.

And finally, we will be broadcasting 3 special issues of the Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE internet radio programme from 1300 – 1330 Finnish time (12-12.30 Central European time) on 25, 26 and 27 August. Point your browser at http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u and this will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice. You can also send us your questions and comments by Twitter using the #ECER2010 hashtag. And to follow Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE events throughout the summer join the SoB Facebook group.

So this is our idea for the European Conference on Educational Research Amplified. But what have we left out? What else could we do? All ideas very welcome.

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    Social Media




    News Bites

    Cyborg patented?

    Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.


    Racial bias in algorithms

    From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter

    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.


    Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years

    Via The Canary.

    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.


    Quality Training

    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.


    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.

  • Twitter

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Categories