I’ve written a number of posts lately pointing to the fragility of business models based on advertising for web 2.0 and social software.

And I have been wondering about what we accept and what we do not in terms fo adverts. Certainly, advertising on mobile devices feels amore intrusive leading to lower than expected revenues in this area. That is a concern to companies like Facebook who are effectively cannibalising their own market and more users link up through mobile apps.

The latest app to ‘go adverts; is skype. And its not surprising that the somewhat intrusive adverts, as large as the picture of the person you are talking to, should have resulted in a lot of complaints. But Microsoft, owners of skype are unapologetic. They say:

While on a 1:1 audio call, users will see content that could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences. So, you should think of Conversation Ads as a way for Skype to generate fun interactivity between your circle of friends and family and the brands you care about. Ultimately, we believe this will help make Skype a more engaging and useful place to have your conversations each and every day.

Given that the adverts are designed to make skype a more erngaging and useful place, itis soemwhat surpising to find that those peopel eweith paid accounst do not get the ads. Is this teh first time a network is allowing yopu to pay for a less engaging and useful experince. Ot – just possibly is Sandhya Venkatachalam from skype bullshitting.

Design matters! And one of the problems with educational technology is that developers ignore design. Interfaces are unimportant, they say. It can be sorted after we get the coding debugged. they do not generally understand when users complain that the Alpha is hard to navigate and is not attractive.

I know because I have been there.  We try our best but none of us in Pontydysgu are specialist graphic designers. One of the problems is that project funding rarely (if ever) includes a budget for graphic design. Life is getting easier because of the more advanced templates for platforms like WordPress but even these need customisation. And lets face it, 90 per cent of Moodle sites look soooo boring.

So it is refreshing when a well designed educational technology web site comes out. So congratulations to Jisc TechDis who have just released a new Toolbox.

The technology section of the site explains:

The word technology is a simple way of describing tools to help us do things. These tools can be computers or tablets, but could just as easily be a mobile phone or even an ebook reader.

All types of technology can be changed and adapted to make them just right for you. This could be changing the size of the font on a screen or having the text read out loud. You may prefer to plan your work using mind mapping software or to record your thoughts as a video. Whatever you choose you can set it up in the way which is the best for you.

This section contains a large number of ideas to help you adapt the technology you use everyday. It covers both Windows and Mac computers as well as using mobile devices and tablets.

And it looks fantastic.

I am ever more interested in how we can use storytelling for learning in and about practice. together with my good friends from Raycom,  I am developing a story telling application, which I hope to pilot in the LearningLayers project, due to start in November. And we have submitted a proposal for a workshop at Educa Online Berlin. This is the abstract.

“And I know that This World is a World of Imagination and Vision. I see Every thing I paint in This World. But Every body does not see alike…”

(The Letters of William Blake. “To Dr John Trusler”, August 23, 1799)

Jerome Bruner has contrasted two ways of knowing: the narrative and the scientific. The former seeks to find a good story (which resonates with readers as life-like) while the latter seeks to draw out key concepts and ideas by abstraction and the application of logic.

Narrative is a means of examining actions, intentions, consequences and context.

A good story should be emotionally engaging, capable of application in different contexts and provide a broader framework for understanding generalities, partly because there is a certain looseness of ideas. Generalities in this sense are different from knowledge derived from abstraction: in this case learning and knowledge are the result of multiple intertwining forces: content, context, and community.

Brown says in purposeful storytelling people should get the central ideas quickly and stories should communicate ideas holistically, naturally, clearly and facilitate intuitive and interactive communication. Story telling enables us to imagine perspectives and share meanings by conjuring up pictures more conducive to a culture of learning and development than a formal analytical presentation which is more in the form of knowledge transmission.

According to Flowers (1988) “People tell stories in an attempt to come to terms with the world and harmonize their lives with reality.”

Storytelling has always been used to transmit knowledge and learning. Within traditional apprenticeships storytelling has been powerful form of learning, but usually in a one to one mode.

The advent of printing allowed stories to be transmitted to many people, but the printed book is a less effective form of transmitting practice-based knowledge and learning

With the increasing power of social software today we are able to weave multimedia and interactive stories and to share them with others though the internet. With mobile devices these stories can be generated through in the different contexts in which we live and learn – in the community and the workplace as well as from a computer or in a classroom.

Moreover, the web and mobile devices allow us to move from a broadcast mode to an interactive and collaborative mode of storytelling, supporting informal learning in different contexts.

This workshop will explore storytelling for learning in different contexts and sectors.

Participants will first be invited to look at the different ways in which storytelling can be used for learning.

They will be supported in telling their own stories and in using different software applications (including audio and video) to share those stories. They will explore the concepts of informal learning collaborative meaning making and how this might be supported by new technologies.

Finally the workshop will look at how facilitators can support story telling – online and face to face – and in the different contexts in which we learn.

Many of you signed up on a form here for the first Taccle handbook, on using social software and web 2.0 for teaching and learning. The handbook was written for teachers wanting to introduce e-learning into their practice. There was also a series of training events for teachers based on the handbook. Both the handbook and the courses were rated highly by teachers and the handbook has been translated into some 8 or 9 languages and been reprinted in some countries

However,  feedback from readers and from course participants was that there were still ‘gaps’ that needed to be filled.

The gaps

First, although teachers across the subject range said they found the both the courses and the handbook useful for developing generic technical skills there were many who still found difficulty in translating that into specific learning activities within their subject area or sector.

Second, although many teachers, as a result of reading the handbook or attending the courses, now feel confident about designing learning objects or using web 2.0 applications, they are less confident about engaging pupils in producing and publishing their own. TACCLE 2 addresses these issues by providing a series of 5 supplementary handbooks (in Dutch, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) written in the same style as the original, around specific subjects.

What Taccle 2 will do

TACCLE 2 for teachers will provide:

• 5 step-by-step guides to integrating ICT and e-learning in YOUR classroom: primary education, maths, science and technology, key competences, arts and culture and humanities.
• practical materials and ideas customised for YOUR subject area and pupil age range
• complementary training courses based on the handbook
• access to web based materials for e-learning
• opportunities to join a network of like-minded colleagues across Europe
• a chance to join in and influence the work of the project as it develops
• free download of the popular E-learning Handbook for Classroom Teachers produced by the Taccle 1 project
• signposts to other banks of open educational resources for your subject

We will be publishing examples of some of the work as it is developed on this web site you can follow the development of the project on the Taccle 2 website.

A geeky article in GeekWire notes that Facebook has downplayed the possibilities of future income from their mobile app. the reason being suggested in that users don’t like mobile apps. I think they are right. I have installed several apps because of the advertising.

And although I have pop ups blocked, I use search engines everyday on my desktop computer which provide advertising. The truth is I never see it. But on a mobile it is pretty hard to avoid. This has some pretty big implications, considering that the whole Web 2 and social software thing has been largely been financed by advertising.

A move back to paid for software and services could be a good thing. It is near to impossible for start up companies or small enterprises with a smart idea to develop a business plan. Indeed, most developers I have talked to just hope that their idea will catch on and one of the big companions will buy them. This doesn’t do much for innovation. Indeed big companies have a generally poor record when it comes to taking over innovatory start ups. Yahoo have managed somehow to run Flickr, perhaps the first really social application, into the ground. Google ended up closing down microblogging service Jaiku and I don’t hold any great hopes for the future of Posterous under Google stewardship.

Not only would a return to paid for applications and services allow a better chance for innovative start-ups to compete and to develop business models which allowed them to remain independent but it could allow the development of better privacy controls and quality. The argument that because a service if free, users have no rights is insidious, but without proper regulation is hard to counter.

And finally, it might get rid of all the advertising spam which pollutes the web.

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.

I love all the gadgets, widgets and services that social software can provide us. Google Fusi9on table sis wonderful for sharing and displaying data. Dropbox shares my files with others (and across my devices). Google docs is great for co-authoring and crowd sourcing ideas. And then there are Flickr, Diigo, Slideshare, Youtube,  Vimeo and all the rest. I have lost track of how many accounts I have created.

But – are there thunderstorms building in the clouds. Google managed to wipe out my account earlier this year when it wrongly linked two accounts together. And today I have had no email due to the stuttering Apple iCloud (Apple claim this is only effecting less than 1 % of users – it just seems that everyone i know with an Apple cloud account is part of that 1%).

And even the wonderful WordPress.com proved an nonviable solution for a recent web site due to the restrictions on embed codes.

I don’t buy into the argument that because these services are (sometimes) free we cannot complain. In one way or another we are paying for these services – be it through a fee or advertising or whatever. Google and Apple don’t just give things away. The free accounts are tied into their business strategy and at the end of the day their balance sheets.

I read a blog by Doug Belshaw the other day who was trying only to use paid for services. I don’t think that is the answer – paid for data and services can be just as insecure or unreliable than free ones. Come to think of it – Apple’s .mac and .me (paid for) services were always flaky. For web sites, we already host install on our own servers. But saying our own we are merely renting those servers (and one of them is in the cloud). I really don’t want the hassle of running an email server – and certainly don’t want to operate a streaming server.

So I really don’t know the answer to this issue. I think you just have to make judgements on a case by case – app by app – basis of what best does the job and what seems to be a decent service and who is providing reasonable Terms and Conditions of servce.

the last three months have been pretty hectic. So much that I have been somewhat lackadaisical in posting on this blog. Partly it has been due to the sheer volume of work and also traveling so much. For some reason I always find it difficult to blog when I am on the road. Another reason is that a lot of the work has been developmental and has naturally generated a series of notes and emails but little writing. Its time to make amends.

In this post I will give a short run down on what we have been up to. Over the next couple of weeks I will post in a bit more detail about the different projects and ideas. All the work shares a series of ideas in common:

• The work is based on the ideas of open education and open data
• The projects seek to enable practitioners to develop their own learning materials
• Most of the project incorporate various elements of social software but more importantly seek to utilise social software functionality to develop a shared social dimension to learning and knowledge sharing
• Most of the work supports both face to face and online learning. However we have been looking hard at how learning and knowledge development is socially mediated in different contexts.

Open Data

Over the last year we have been working with a series of ideas and applications for using open data for careers guidance. Supported by the Mature-IP project, by Careers Wales and Connexions Northumberland and more lately UKCES, we have been looking at how to use open data around Labour Market Information for careers advice and guidance. Needless to say, it has not proved as easy as we thought, raising a whole series of issues around target users, mediation,  and data sources, data reliability and data interpretation, amongst others.

We have encountered a series of technical issues but these can be overcome. More important is understanding the social uses of open data for learning and decision making which is much harder!

Webquests 2.o

The original idea of  Webquests was based around a series of questions designed to encourage learners to search for new meaning and deeper understanding using web based tools and resources. Although Webquests have been used for some time in schools and colleges, we have been working to adopt an updated Webquest 2.0 approach to the needs of learners in Small and Medium Enterprises. These inquiry–oriented activities take place in a Web 2.0–enhanced, social and interactive open learning environment (face to face and/or on–line) that combine at the same time collaborative learning with self–paced learning.

Once more, this work has posed a series of challenges. While we have been pretty successful in using webquests 2.0 with SMEs, it has proved harder to enable practitioners to develop their own online learning materials.

Work based learning

We have been continuing to explore how to use technology to support work based learning and in particular how to use mobile technologies to extend learning to different contexts in Small and Medium Enterprises. We are especially interested in focusing on work practices and how technology can be used to support informal learning and practice in the workplace, rather than the acquisition of more formal knowledge. In order to finance this work we have developed a number of funding applications entailing both background research and (more enjoyably) visits to different companies.

We are fairly confident that we will get support to take this work forward in the near future.

Social media and social empowerment

We have been looking at how to use social media and in particular internet radio, not for promoting social inclusion, but for giving a voice and opportunity for expression to those excluded form access to traditional education and media. Once more, we are confident that we will be able to launch a new initiative around this in the next couple of months.

We will be publishing more about this work over the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in any of these ideas or projects please get in touch.

George Siemen’s latest post, based on his talk at TEDxEdmonton, makes for interesting reading.

George says:

Classrooms were a wonderful technological invention. They enabled learning to scale so that education was not only the domain of society’s elites. Classrooms made it (economically) possible to educate all citizens. And it is a model that worked quite well.

(Un)fortunately things change. Technological advancement, coupled with rapid growth of information, global connectedness, and new opportunities for people to self-organized without a mediating organization, reveals the fatal flaw of classrooms: slow-developing knowledge can be captured and rendered as curriculum, then be taught, and then be assessed. Things breakdown when knowledge growth is explosive. Rapidly developing knowledge and context requires equally adaptive knowledge institutions. Today’s educational institutions serve a context that no longer exists and its (the institution’s) legacy is restricting innovation.

George calls for the development of an open learning analytics architecture based on the idea that: “Knowing how schools and universities are spinning the dials and levers of content and learning – an activity that ripples decades into the future – is an ethical and more imperative for educators, parents, and students.”

I am not opposed to what he is saying, although I note Frances Bell’s comment about privacy of personal data. But I am unsure that such an architecture really would improve teaching and learning – and especially learning.

As George himself notes, the driving force behind the changes in teaching and learning that we are seeing today is the access afforded by new technology to learning outside the institution. Such access has largely rendered irrelevant the old distinctions between formal, non formal and informal learning. OK – there is still an issue in that accreditation is largely controlled by institutions who naturally place much emphasis on learning which takes place within their (controlled and sanctioned) domain. yet even this is being challenged by developments such as Mozilla’s Open Badges project.

Educational technology has played only a limited role in extending learning. In reality we have provided access to educational technology to those already within the system. But the adoption of social and business software for learning – as recognised in the idea of the Personal Learning Environment – and the similar adaption of these technologies for teaching and learning through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – have moved us beyond the practice of merely replicating traditional classroom architectures and processes in technology.

However there remain a series of problematic issues. Perhaps foremost is the failure to develop open curricula – or, better put, to rethink the role of curricula for self-organized learning.

For better or worse, curricula traditionally played a role in scaffolding learning – guiding learners through a series of activities to develop skills and knowledge. These activities were graded, building on previously acquired knowledge in developing a personal knowledge base which could link constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.

As Peter Pappas points out in his blog on ‘A Taxonomy of Reflection’, this in turn allows the development of what Bloom calls ‘Higher Order Reflection’ – enabling learners to combine or reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure.

Vygostsky recognised the importance of a ‘More Knowledgeable Other’ in supporting reflection in learning through a Zone of Peripheral Development. Such an idea is reflected in the development of Personal Learning Networks, often utilising social software.

Yet the curricula issue remains – and especially the issue of how we combine and reorganise elements of learning into new patterns and structure without the support of formal curricula. This is the more so since traditional subject boundaries are breaking down. Present technology support for this process is very limited. Traditional hierarchical folder structures have been supplemented by keywords and with some effort learners may be able to develop their own taxonomies based on metadata. But the process remains difficult.

So – if we are to go down the path of developing new open architectures – my priority would be for an open architecture of curricula. Such a curricula would play a dual role in supporting self organised learning for individuals but also at the same time supporting emergent rhizomatic curricula at a social level.

The main reason I have been so quiet on this blog in recent weeks has been the European bidding season.

Pontydysgu receives no regular funding and although we have some small consultancy contracts and do some teaching, the majority of our income is from project work. In the past, we had considerable funding from various UK agencies, this largely dried up with the onset of the recession and government cutbacks. This, we have become more reliant on funding from the European Union.

There are two main programmes for education and training in Europe, the European 7th Framework research programme and the Lifelong Learning Programme. The Research Framework funds larger projects than the LLL, but has historically been more competitive.

For both programmes, the application process is not straightforward, requiring completion of long forms and documents. In general both programmes are targeted towards innovation, however defined, and both tend to set priorities based on current EU policy directives. Both also require multinational project partnerships. Both have been on call recently – involving many hours of work to develop proposals.

In the past, the reality was that one or perhaps two partners would prepare the project requiring only limit input from other project members. And whilst this is still sometimes the case things are changing fast. For large and c0mplex projects especially in the Technology Enhanced Learning field expertise is needed from different disciplines and from people with different knowledge and skills.

Technology for distance communication and for research has allowed the dispersed and collaborative development of project proposals to become a reality. We have recently submitted a large scale proposal to the Research Framework IST  programme on learning in Small and Medium Enterprises. This project has some 16 partners drawn from I guess around ten countries. And whilst the input and hard work of the coordinator was central to the proposal, the work was undertaken collaboratively with many of the partners making a major input.

What tools did we use? Google docs were used for collaboratively producing earlier versions of our ideas. Doodle was important for setting dates for meetings. Flashmeeting was used extensively for fortnightly meetings of partners (in the latter stages of the proposal weekly or even daily meetings became the norm). Skype was also used for bilateral meetings. And Dropbox was used as a shared file repository. Dropbox proved to be a little problematic in producing somewhat confusing conflicted copies which then has to be edited together. But overall the system worked well. I think what is important is that the tools do exist. And we do not need any big research infrastructure, rather what is needed is the imagination to share through the use of everyday productivity and social software tools.

And it seems to me that if we are able to use such tools to develop a complex and collaboratively produced research proposal, the same tools can be used for collaboration between learners or for small businesses. The barrier is not so much usability fo the applications themselves, but a willingness, understanding and appreciation of how to collaborate!