First a warning. This is the beginning of an idea but by no means fully tho0ught out.It comes from a discussion with Jenny Hughes last week, when we were talking about the future direction of work on Personal Learning Environments.

Jenny came up with three ‘dimensions’ of a PLE – intra-personal, inter-personal and extra personal which I presented at the #TICEDUCA2010 conference in Lisbon

The first – intra-personal – describes the spaces we use to work on our own. This includes the different software we use and the different physical spaces we work in. It is possibel that our intra personal spaces will look quite different – reflecting both our ways of thinking and our preferred ways of working. one interesting aspect of the intra personal learning environment is the importance of aesthetics – including the look and ‘feel’ of the environment. And whilst many of the3 developers I work with undertake usability standards, I do not think they really ever consider aesthetics.

The third dimension – extra personal – refers to the things we do out in the web – to our publications, to blogs like this, to the videos we post – to the things we share with others.

But perhaps the most interesting is dimension is the intra-personal learning environment. This is the shared spaces we use to collaborate and work with others. All too often such spaces are imposed – by teachers or by project coordinators or those responsible for web site development. And all too often they fail – because users have no ownership of those spaces. In other words the spaces are not seen or felt of as part of a PLE. How can this be overcome? Quite simply the inter-personal space needs to be negotiated – to develop spaces and ways of working that everyone can feel comfortable with. Of course this may mean compromises but it is through the process of negotiation that such compromises will emerge.

The problem may be that the PLE has come to be overly associated with personalisation rather than negotiation and ownership and too little attention has been paid to collaboration and social learning. I think it would also be interesting to look at how ideas and knowledge emerge – or as the Mature project would say – how Knowledge matures. In developing ideas and knowledge I suspect we use all three dimensions of our Personal Learning Environment – with new ideas emerging say from reading something in the extra PLE, moving ideas back to the intra PLE for thinking and working and developing and then sharing and working with others in the (negotiated) inter Personal Learning Environment. Of course in practice it will be more complex than this. But i would like to see how these processes work in the real world – although I suspect it would be a methodologically challenging piece of research to carry out. Anyone any ideas?

Last weekend I spoke at the #TICEDUCA2010 conference in Lisbon, Portugal about PLEs. I greatly enjoyed myself and even may have developed a couple of new ideas (more on this later this week). But first a few impressions. I have to say this is a very subjective viewpoint as only the keynote sessions – mine and Helen Barrett’s were interpreted. Having said this, I had the perfect excuse to hang around the coffee bar and ended up having many fasci9ntaing conversations – some of which I am now continuing by email.

Firstly something about the composition of th3e conference. from a quick straw poll it appeared a majority of the participants were teachers. Thus many of the discussions I had were closely related to the practice of teaching and learning. And there was certainly great interest in the idea of PLEs, even if there was some confusion about how exactly a Personal Learning environment differed from say Moodle.

Most of the teachers I talked to were enthusiastic about the potential of using technology for teaching and earning. This may to some extent due to the Portuguese policy of providing subsidised laptops and broadband  connections for  teachers, school children, and adult learners.According to Dan Tapscott nearly nine out of 10 students in Grades 1 to 4 now have a laptop on their desk. Don also points out that there has been heavy investment in teacher training to use the technologies for teaching and learning and I found teachers ready and eager to discuss pedagogic approaches. Having said that, some pointed out to a continuing gap between the policy aspiration and the reality, especially when it came to how the computers were being used.

Many of those I spoke to saw PLEs as a fresh approach, particularly for linking learning in school with informal learning outside the institution. Yet the issues and barriers were only too familiar. How do we motivate students who may be disillusioned and disengaged with schools and formal education? How do we develop a more expansive enquiry based pedagogy whilst at the same time delivering a prescribed and more limited curriculum? How can we develop collaborative learning whilst meeting assessment regulations focusing on individual competence?

None of these questions are new. But it is encouraging that so many teachers are engaging with these questions. I came away impressed with  so many ideas from researchers and teachers I was lucky enough to talk to – but still wondering how we can harness their ideas to make change happen?

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.

The Barcelona PLE conference was a lot of fun. A great atmosphere, a fine venue and at last the chance to meet face to face with many of the people who have contributed comments on our web site over the years. We tried to break with traditional confernce presentatio0n formats to encourage more interaction between participants. And on the whole I think the change in formats worked – though as with anything there is room for improvement.

Next years PLE conference will be at the University of Southampton – watch this space for more details.But in the meantime there is plenty of work to be done. We had over 60 papers submitted to the conference. Many of them are very good. And whilst of course we have published them all (or are in the course of doing so) on the PLE conference web site, we are working on three special journal editions featuring papers from the conference. We will be in touch with many of the authors in the coming weeks and hope to include as many papers as we are able.

We are also thinking about launching a number of events in autumn and spring including hopefully, a number of online seminars. Just watch this space or the PLE2010 conference site for more details.

Multi media was very much in evidence at the PLE conference in Barcelona earlier this month. Besides the live streaming and a dazzling array of ipads and other handheld devices, we were able to use CitiLab’s own wonderfully appointed multimedia studio. Joyce Seitzinger interviewed a number of organisers, unkeynote speakers and participants as part of her “What my PLN means to me” project. There is some good stuff here, well worth viewing.

More videos to follow

Konferencja PLE (PLE = Personal Learning Environments, czyli osobiste srodowiska uczenia się) miała swoją premierę w Barcelonie (8-9 lipca 2010). Byłam jedą z organizatorów i o swoich wrażeniach z tej perspektywy napisałam tutaj.  Podczas konferencji rozmawiałam o PLE i o konferencji z wieloma osobami, które zajmują się tym tematem. Ale jak widzą to studenci? Jedną z uczestniczek konferencji była Aleksandra Jaroszyńska. Aleksandra studiuje w Barcelonie od trzech lat na międzynarodowym uniwersytecie ESEI kierunek Business Administration na poziomie Bachelor. Z Aleksandrą rozmawiałam po konferencji na Skypie. Byłam ciekawa jej spojrzenia na osobiste środowiska uczenia się i jej ocenę konferencji. Chciałam dowiedzieć się, jak studenci podchodzą do PLE i co daa im ta konferencja. Oto zapis naszej rozmowy.

Ilona: Powiedz prosze, jak to się stało, że trafiłaś na konferencję PLE?

Aleksandra: Z PLE zetknełam się po raz pierwszy w czasie moich zajęć. Mój wykładwca – Ricardo Torres Kompen, docent od Information Technology, wprowadził nas w ten temat z racji tego, że razem ze swoimi współpracownikami z Anglii prowadził badania odnośnie platform dla PLE. Jako studenci zostalismy zaangażowani do organizacji konferencji.

Ilona : W jaki sposób wykładowca zbliżył was do PLE?

Aleksandra: Na samym początku nie wiedzieliśmy, że będziemy studiować koncept PLE. Na zajęciach przede wszystkim bazowaliśmy na poznawaniu narzędzi sieci 2.0 takich jak Flickr, Twitter czy de.li.cio.us. Po około pół roku studiowania różnych aplikacji nasz wykładowca zadał nam jako pracę poskładanie ich wszystkich w jedno i stworzenie czegoś, co było by naszym perfekcyjnym narzędziem do nauki, czyli generalnie naszym PLE. Zajmowaliśmy się PLE z perspektywy użytkownika. Większość z nas nawet nie miała pojęcia o istnieniu Twittera czy Flickra, nie wspominając już o innych programach. Więc najpierw musieliśmy nauczyć się ich używać, potem debatowaliśmy nad tym jak mogą się przyczynić do naszego procesu nauki. A na koniec wdrażaliśmy praktykę w życie…

Ilona : A w jaki sposob “złożyłas” twoje PLE? Czym się kierowałaś?

Aleksandra: Moje PLE było dosyć specyficzne, dlatego, że oparłam je na koncepcie, którego nikt wcześniej nie założył. Dla mnie moje optymalne PLE to … mój własny computer, więc to do czego dażyłam to stworzenie wirtualnej wersji mojego PLE poprzez użycie “web operating systems”, czyli potocznie mówiac wirtualnego desktopu. Przestudiowałam kilka z dostępnych wersji pod względem tego, do jakiego stopnia mogą być one dostosowane do moich potrzeb, czyli pod względem tworzenia i modyfikowania dokumentów, słuchania muzyki, edytowania zdjeć, ale też z drugiej strony pod względem możliwości linkowania moich narzędzi sieci społecznych. Najlepszą platformą okazał się G.ho.st, który niestety obecnie już nie istnieje. Ale stworzyłam też moje PLE na bazie Ajax Windows. Ma więcej ograniczej, ale służy w miarę dobrze, no i wciąż jest na sieci …

Ilona : Wróćmy teraz do konferncji PLE – jak ją oceniasz?

Aleksandra: Myslę, że ze strony organizacyjnej wszystko było naprawdę świetnie przygotowane, było wiele możliwości poznania nowych ludzi i atmosfera naprawdę do tego zachęcała …

Ilona : Ale…

Aleksandra: Ale problem dla mnie i moich znajomych z uniwersytetu, którzy pomagali przy organizacji to było ukierunkowanie konferencji. Większość sesji i warsztatów była przeznaczona dla nauczycieli albo profesjonalistów zajmujących się badaniami nad PLE. Dla nas studentów byłoby dużo ciekawiej, gdyby zostały przedstawione nowe metody tworzenia PLE albo nowe platformy i aplikacje, ktróre mogłyby nasze PLE wzbogacić. Generalnie brakowało mi praktycznego podejscia do PLE. Większość konferencji, przynajmniej te sesje, w których uczestniczyłam, dotyczyły głównie konceptu PLE. My mieliśmy nadzieję na to, że dowiemy się np. jak używać PLE na studiach i w pracy.

Ilona : Rozumiem. Jestem ciekawa, czy Twoje spojrzenie na PLE zmieniło się przez tą konferencję?

Aleksandra: Powiedziałabym, że się rozszeżyło. Osobiście wciaż mam swoją własną wizję PLE jako miejsca, w którym znajdują się wszystkie materiały, których używam do nauki, rozrywki i generalnie rozwijania się. Natomiast rozmawiając z innymi użytkownikami PLE i słuchajac konferencji, zdałam sobie sprawę, że PLE nie jest tylko tym, czego nauczyl nas nasz wykładowca. Zrozumiałam, że PLE to znaczeniowo dużo szerszy koncept. Generalnie, pierwotne podchodziłam do PLE z punktu czysto wirtualnego, czyli moje pierwotne PLE zawierało jedynie “digital resources”, czyli zasoby wirtualne. Konferencja PLE uświadomiła mi po pierwsze, że PLE może istnieć poza komputerem. Po drugie, że dla wielu, PLE nie jest bazą danych informacji, ale łańcuchem, który łączy wiele informacji i tworzy przez to “ściezkę nauki“.

Ilona : To z czego składa się Twoje PLE?

Aleksandra: Moje PLE można podzielić na sekcje, które zresztą są widoczne w ułożeniu mojego pulpitu. Pierwsza część to wszystkie moje dokumenty, prezentacje, artykuły i prace, czyli typowa część biurowa, czyli to, co zazwyczaj nosimy na naszym USB. Druga część to sieć 2.0, czyli linki do Facebooka, Flickra i do moich bookmarków. Generalnie wszystko, co używam na sieci do kontaktowania się ze znajomymi i do szukania informacji. Trzecia część to moje ulubione RSS feeds, które mam zachowane – mój desktop wyświetla mi nowe artykuły, które się pojawiaja w moich ulubionych magazynach. No i dodatkowo to, co cenię w moim PLE to to jak mi pomaga w organizacji, czyli to, że mogę dodać do niego kalendarz, prognozę pogody, listę rzeczy do zrobienia, itp – czyli typowe dla aplikacji internetowych “widgets”. Poza tym z mojego PLE mam bezpośredni dostęp do moich e-maili, które są importowane ze wszystkich moich kont mailowych oraz dostęp do wszystkich komunikatorów, takich jak  Google Talk, MSN, itp.

Ilona : Czy są jakieś problemy związane z prowadzeniem takiego własnego PLE?

Aleksandra: Główny problem to stabilność platformy. W związku z tym, że używam mojego PLE na bazie wirtualnego pulpitu, dostep do niego i jego funkcjonalność jest zależna od osób trzecich no i niestety, jak widać na przykładzie G.ho.st, czasami jest to duży problem. Jest wiele innych problemów, na przykład to, że każda platforma oferuje coś innego, więc tak naprawdę cieżko jest znaleźć perfekcyjną wersję, która będzie zawierać wszystko to, czego potrzebuję w moim PLE. Szczerze mówiąc zbudowałam moje PLE ponad rok temu, ale pół roku temu kupiłam jeden z tych małych przenośnych laptopów i odkąd go mam, używam mojego wirtualnego PLE coraz mniej …

Ilona : Dlaczego?

Aleksandra: Bo głowną zaletą tego podejścia jest to, że PLE jako wirtualny pulpit jest dostępny z każdego komputera. W tej chwili mój laptop jest na tyle przenośny, że nie potrzebuję wirtualnego dostępu do pulpit, tylko noszę go ze sobą 🙂 Generalnie wszystkie moje aplikacje są dostępne z pulpitu mojego komputera. Muszę jednak przyznać, że dużo łatwiej jest stworzyć taki dostęp z wirtualnego pulpitu niż z tego faktycznego w moim komputerze. Wiec to może być duży plus dla pozostania w wirtualnym PLE.

…

To była bardzo ciekawa rozmowa. Bardzo chciałabym się dowiedzieć, jakich narzędzi sieci 2.0 używacie? Co jest Wszym osobistym środowiskiem uczenia się?

Photo Samscam

Its been a week off from the blog. Following the PLE2010 conference in Barcelona I took a short holiday. And since I have been back I have been fighting (unsuccessfully) a power failure in my office. So now I am squatting in a friend’s house and using my laptop.

I have much to say about the PLE2010 conference – I am not quite sure where to start.

Firstly it was a truly social conference – social in the both face to face and distant participants were involved in the different sessions. Social too, in the way the pre-conference discussions ran into the conference proper and then into the discussions at coffee breaks and in the evening. The formal conference was just one part of the whole event. And social in the use of media. Besides the live streaming of many sessions, it woudl appear the conference generated over 5000 tweets on the first day (the tweets are archived here).Indeed, for many of us it was the first chance to meet face to face people we have been collaborating with on line for a long time.

Much of this was down to the design of the conference. the pre-conference publicity and discuxxiosn had been focused on social media and in particualr twitter. And the programme design, from unkeynotes to cafe style sessions, debates amnd workshops, was signed to facilitate social interaction and participation. And it is encouraging that many have said they will relook at how they are organising conferences and draw on our ideas.

But what about the ideas? Firstly it was very heartening to see that we seemed to have moved beyond the stage of defining a PLE by what it is not i.e. not a VLE. Instead participants were looking outwards, at how to support learning. I am not sure how much we shared common understandings and meanings around PLEs (sadly I cannot find a record of the session which tried to arrive at such a common definition) but there seemed sufficient understanding for common debates.

One controversial issue was how far it was possible to provide an institutional PLE. This debate was driven by the folks from SAPO Campus in Portugal who are trying to do just that (and still managing to find time for late night and in depth analysis of the failings of the Portugese football team!). My own take is that I do not mind where the tools for a PLE come from as long as the leaner is in control.

Two ‘discourses’ particularly heartened me. The first was between educational researchers and practitioners and software and technical developers. This is an oft troubled discourse in the ed tech community. It may be that the common understandings around the idea of a PLE are allowing these different groups to work together in new ways. I particularly enjoyed the session on using Google Wave as a PLE and was impressed by the Talkingabout video sharing site. But what charatcterised these ideas – as in others I could not attend but heard from others about – was the innovation in appropriating technologies for pedagogic innovation.

Another – and more problematic but recurrent discourse was the issue of motivation. Participants were trying to develop PLEs with students inside the schooling and university systems. But surveys and anecdotal evidence suggests students are wary being overly focused on what work they need to do to pass exams, rather than exploring ideas and learning. And most students view direct didactic teaching as the best approach to passing their exams. As such they have little time for reflection or indeed little understanding as to why they should engage in such activity. This is problematic. We may consider their longer term learning important and thus view the development of meta-cognition and problem solving a priority. But perhaps inevitably under the present education systems their major concern is just to jump the next hurdle in the education race.

My only personal disappointment was that the major focus for PLE development and implementation for the vast majority of participants was for learners within schools and universities. There was limited interest in work based learning or in learning outside teh existing systems – the very areas where I think PLEs have the greatest potential.

Indeed, I think we have to consider the wider issue of where to locate the PLE debate. Clearly it is not just another instance of educational technology. But neither can it be easily subsumed in considerations of pedagogic approaches to the use of ICT for learning. I increasingly feel that the whole issue of PLEs is closely related to the ongoing discussions around open education. The very promise of PLEs is to understand the use of technology for learning in a new way, in a context where learning becomes part of society and is free and open to all.

But now there is a lot of work to be done. We have over 70 papers and many offers of publications. Most participants seemed to assume that PLE2011 was already on the cards (watch this blog for more news on that). And the bigger question is how we can use the ideas and networks generated by the conference to build a collective community of practice based on networking and sharing. Any thoughts or ideas  very welcome.

This morning I met face to face with Alec Couros together with whom I am delivering the unKeynote presentation to the PLE2010 conference in Barcelonatomorrow morning.

We have crowd sourced the presentation. In response to the nine questions we posted 10 days ago, we have received over 25 replies, including slides, text, audio and video content. We have put all the slides together which will be the basis for the unKeynote tomorrow. You are all invited to take part. We will have roving microphones for those of you lucky enough to be with us in Barcelona. And for those of you who cannot be her face to face, just ask your comments or ask questions using the #PLE_BCN hash tag. Cristina Costa and Joyce Seitzinger (better known to the Twitterati as Catspyjamasnz) will be monitoring the twitterfeed and bringing to our attention your tweets. We are going to work with three screens – one for the crowd sourced slides, one for twitter and a third for our skrbl boards. For each of the key questions we have set up an open Scrbl board for participants. And if you don’t want to wait until tomorrow – you can contribute your ideas on the skrbl boards now. Here are the questions and the urls for the scrbl boards. The unKeynote runs from 9.15 to 1015 CET tomorrow (Thursday morning) and there are rumours it will be streamed (watch the hashtag tweets for details).

UPDATE – you can watch live stream from here – http://eventv.projectescitilab.eu/index.html

1. With all of the available Web 2.0 tools, is there a need for “educational technology”? – http://skrbl.com/142175278
2. What are the implications of PLEs/PL on traditional modes/structures of education? – http://skrbl.com/142176866
3. What are the key attributes of a healthy PLE/PLN? – http://skrbl.com/142177071
4. What pedagogies are inspired by PLEs (e.g., networked learning, connected learning)? Give examples of where PLEs/PLNs have transformed practice.- http://skrbl.com/142177180
5. What are the implications of PLEs/PLNs beyond bringing educational technology into the classroom, and specifically toward workplace/professional learning? – http://skrbl.com/142177251
6. If PLEs/PLNs are becoming the norm, what does it mean for teachers/trainers (or the extension: what does it mean for training teachers & trainers)?- http://skrbl.com/142177326
7. As our networks continue to grow, what strategies should we have in managing our contacts, our connections, and our attention? Or, extension, how scalable are PLEs/PLNs? – http://skrbl.com/142177391
8. Can we start thinking beyond PLEs/PLNs as models? Are we simply at a transitional stage? What will be the next, new model for learning in society? (e.g., where are we headed?) – http://skrbl.com/142177468

And after the presentation we will be publishing our works and yours – together!

In Monday’s edition of weeks series of blog posts around the PLE2010 conference being held in Barcelona, I commented on the use of social media. Indeed, from the level of on-line activity the conference has already started! You can pick up on what is happening through following the #PLE_2010 hash tag. And the #PLE_BCN daily newspaper – http://paper.li/tag/PLE_BCN provides a surprisingly rich picture of what is going on. But here are a few posts which have caught my eye.

Firstly George Couros has blogged that he is “honoured to be asked to moderate a session at the PLE Conference in Barcelona (#PLE_BCN on Twitter) to talk about what exactly is a Personal Learning Environment.  In this session, myself and 3 other educators (Cristina Costa, Ilona Buchem and Wolfgang Reinhardt) that are located all over the world, will work with participants to figure out a definition for the PLE term. ” George has posted the following diagramme to start the discussion.

Sia Vogel has contributed the following Prezi towards Alec Couros’s and my joint unkeynote presentation.

PLE_BCN Conference Jordi Adell from epdrntr on Vimeo.

Jordi will be doing a joint keynote with Ismael Pena Lopez. Here is his contribution.

That is all I have time for today. More tomorrow – live from Barcelona.

Well it is PLE2010 Conference week so no apologies is that is the theme of the week. And in pre-conference reflection mood I wanted to reflect on some of the things we have done well and some we have done less well.

Fist of all, PLE2010 has some 70 or so presentations and over 100 delegates. Considering we set out with no large organisations or associations backing the conference I think this is pretty good. The conference has been put together through the hard work of a fairly inexperienced organising committee backed by the experience and enthusiasm of the community – edupunk working at its best!

And most of the publicity has been generated not through traditional media but through the4 us eof social media especially Twitter – just look at #PLE_BCN for proof. There are still barriers to the do it yourself cvonference model – we had big problems setting up payments systems that worked> And whilst the opens ource EasyChair system is sort of OK it does have its quirks (it would be very useful if someone could do some more work on the software).

As I told yesterday, I am very happy about our mix of traditional calls fo contribution (needed for researchers to gain travel grants form institutions with more unconferencing formats for presentation. I am sure the event is going to be a lot of fun.

The issue I think we have not paid sufficient attention to is what we do with the outcomes of the conference. True all the papers etc. are available as on-line proceedings. But how do we represent the outcomes of the different sessions to the wider community? How can we capture ideas and use such ideas in practice and in future research? How can we use the conference as a live event in our community generating new shared knowledge and experience?

Face to face events are valuable, not just for the participants, but for the community as a whole. But I am not sure we make best use of them at the moment. Your ideas would as ever be very welcome.

Looking forward to seeing some of you in Barcelona. 🙂