Quick rant.This sort of thing worries me greatly:

“The award winning, patent pending, software “Metamorphosis” is a world first! It converts a Microsoft Word text document into a fully fledged elearning course with assessments in minutes.

This development process is fully automated. It includes the insertion of text relevant graphics on each page. The library contains 25,000 images and can be expanded. Voice and video clips can be added as well.

Every kind of course assessment is possible. Multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks, completing of paragraphs and part identification on an image are some of the possible assessment types.

The files will be ready for deployment as a standalone, LAN based, web based course or as an addition to your LMS.”

Now anything which makes for easy authoring is very important in that it faciliatates teachers and trainers creating their own e-learning material. But the idea that e-learning materials comprise of a word document with some pictures and simple tests added is exactly what we are fighting against and just what makes so much e-learning boring and a turn off for learners. And for that matter we could do with less of the award winning, patent pending, world first hyperbole.

Great Evolve seminar on Personal Learning Environments last night (you can see the recording here – if this link fails click here and go to Monday 22). What came through clearly was that PLEs are primariy a social and political issue. As I write this Scott Wilson who presented at the seminar has just twittered “scottbw PLE – Its quite tricky keeping the social and technical interventions both in focus at the same time.” But that is exactly what we have to do. A focus on the technical without taking up the social and politcial will fail. I would go even further to say it is the social and polictical fcus of what we wish to achieve in modelling a new vision of our education and learning systems which should be driving technicl development. I see so many technical presentations which leave me wondering – ‘so what’. And as Francis Bell rightly said last night we need to evaluate and understand the impact of previous generations of technology implementation on education and learning. But I also think many of us are hiding behind technology and failing to express our true wishes which are to reshape the way we learn in our societies.

Now may be the time to open such a debate. The PLE discussions have been instrumental in revealing many of the systemic tensions in education and traning provision. Now we need to start to articulate a new agenda and to consider how we can shape techncial development to support such a vision.

So much seems to have been written about F-Alt – the fringe conference organised at ALT-C this year – that it almost pointless to say more (see links on the F-Alt wiki and on the #FAlt08 Twemes page). But I would like to add some words about the learning processes.

First of all the organisation. F-Alt did not have any formal organising body in the normal sense. But it did have organsiation and leadership in the sense that individuals took responsibility for doing things. This relied on a high degree of community and of trust and possibly refects the emergence of a community of practice aorund the use of ICT for learning which has perhaps been lacking before. Maintaining community openess and willingness to remain emergent are challenges for the future.

Th technologies worked pretty well. The Wet Paint wiki offers a quick way to develop a collaborative organising platform. Twitter was pretty useful for getting the word out although it would have been better if Twemes had been restored earlier and we had been able to publicise our tag.

The big success fo me was the format. Running short, sharp and issue focused sessions – no speakers were allowed more than three minutes – allowed both a focus n those topics particpants wanted to discuss and also, critically, highly participative events. None of us knew the venue in advance and we expropriated public spaces. Whilst this did pose problems in terms of people knowing where events would be and in somewhat distractive background noise levels (30 of us discussed e-Portolfios around a poolt table in the corner of a pub!) it also kept us focused on the wider conference and communiy environment in which we are working. Perhps there is a learning lesson for organsers of ‘official’ confernces. There are plenty of formats other than the stand and tell – or stand and powerpoint – followed by three or four questions. Lets try and innovate. I would also like to see experiments with ‘blended conferences’ where presentations can take place online and face to face sessions used to discuss, debate and challenge around the issues and possibly produce new resources and outcomes.

I am sure that others will replicate the sucess of F-Alt and we will see more such fringe happenings in the future. This raises the question of the relationship between conference organisers and the fringe. In many ways F-Alt was all the better for being not associated officially with Alt-C. But, I believe F-Alt provided added value to the conference and thus such events should be encouraged by confernce organisers. But raher than endorsing or officially supporting such Fringe activities, better could be to provide open spaces where such activities might take place. In other words, to accept that unconferencing is what is says and is not part of the conference, but a useful, complimentary and parallel activity. As such it could be good if conference organisers were to provide times and spaces where such activities could take place – not just for F-Alt bu for anyone with a burning issue to discuss.

A truly frightening post in the Guardian. Are these the sort of people we want teaching our kids? Mind, short selling on qualifications could be sort of fun!
“Teaching may be high on the list of career options being pondered by sacked finance workers, new figures suggest. Inquiries about teacher training programmes have soared since the start of the credit crisis, according to the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), which hopes to entice redundant bankers into the classroom.
The number of people inquiring about becoming a teacher has risen by almost 34% since March, said the TDA. From March to September last year its website received 758,308 unique web hits; the same period this year saw 1,018,580. And the number of people registering an interest in changing career to become a teacher has also risen – by 13% year on year, the TDA said.
The organisation said it believes both graduates and career changers are seeking more secure career paths in the wake of financial instability.”

One of the first of a series of ctach up posts from the last two weeks of wall to wall conferences and meetings.

For a long time I have been complaining at the ludicrous policies that ban students from using small powerful mobile computers – yes telephones. And now – in the UK at least – there does seem to be some movement. Remarkably, this article is from the online version of the Daily Mail – which as UK readers will appreciate is not normally a fan of anything progressive!

“Children should be allowed to use their mobile phones in class because they can serve as ‘learning aids’, a study claims today.

Academics are calling on schools to rethink bans on phone handsets after trials suggested that functions such as calculators, stopwatches and email can be ‘educational’………

During a nine-month experiment involving classes aged 14 to 16, pupils either used their own mobiles in lessons or the new generation of ‘ smartphones’ which allow internet connection.

They were used to create short films, set homework reminders, record a teacher reading a poem and time experiments with the phones’ stopwatches.

The smartphones also allowed pupils to access revision websites, log into the school email system, or transfer electronic files between school and home.

The study by researchers at Nottingham University involved 331 pupils in schools in Cambridgeshire, West Berkshire and Nottingham……

‘After their hands-on experience, almost all pupils said they had enjoyed the project and felt more motivated.’

One teacher told researchers that students like mobiles and they know how to use them.

‘Using this technology gives them more freedom to express themselves without needing to be constantly supervised,’ the teacher said. ……..

Dr Hartnell-Young said: ‘While the eventual aim should be to lift blanket bans on phones, we do not recommend immediate, whole-school change.

‘Instead we believe that teachers, students and the wider community should work together to develop policies that will enable this powerful new learning tool to be used safely.'”

A good start but the reactions to the artcile on the web site were far from progressive. Whether this refelcts where teachers or at or just mirrors the Daily Mail readership is hard to say:

“Mobile phones will be used for “learning”? Does that follow on from the Internet not being used for downloading porn or computers not being used for playing games? Flimsy research from a bunch of nutters who want to look hip and with it.

– Maggie, Oxford, 4/9/2008 4:09″

“Appalling idea. People are completely ruled by their mobiles. It will cause more bullying and stealing of popular phones. Leave mobile phones at home.

– Sue, Southampton, 4/9/2008 7:49″

“Whoever came up with this waste of money study – needs to be sacked. Where did they get their information from – a text message?

– Don, UK, 4/9/2008 8:03″

And so on. But it is a crack in the system and cracks can be widened. Whilst on the subject of mobiles there is a great post on the Blog of Proximal Development about the Teachers Without Borders ICT Workshop in Capetown.  Konrad Glogowski quotes a teacher saying “I understand what you mean about engagement. When my students ask me, ‘Miss, what does this word mean?’ I tell them to take out their cell phones and find out for themselves. I want them not to always ask me.”

Seems teachers in the UK have some catching up to do!

The Open Seminar Sessions @ EVOLVE are back!

This Month is about Personal Learning Environments. Hopefully a lot of food for thought here!!

This month our guest speaker is Scott Wilson from CETIS UK, who will share some thoughts about Personal Learning Environments

The idea of a PLE (Personal Learning Environments) is that learners can configure different services and tools to develop their own learning environment, bringing together informal learning from the home, the workplace as well as more formal provision by education institutions. The PLE is controlled by the learner and as well as offering an environment for accessing different information and knowledge allows access to web based publishing and other opportunities for creating content and expressing and exchanging ideas. The idea behind the PLE is to harness the power and potential of social software and web 2.0 applications for learning.

The session will take place in September, 22 2008 at 1800 UK time (please check your time here)

We will meet in Elluminate meeting, which you can access here. [ This is an open meeting. Attendee(s) don’t require a password to join, even if requested to do so. Just type your name]

I left AltC early last Thursday morning to travel to Leiden in the Netherlands for a meeting of the Eurtrainer porject. Eurtrainer is developing a network for trainers in Europe and together with Cristina Costa and Dirk Stieglitz, I am organising an online confernce on the training of trainers on November 5 and 6. The conference is free and you can register online on the Trainers in Europe web site.

Anyway here is the main conference blurb.

First International on-line conference – 5-6 November 2008

The Network to Support Trainers in Europe is launching its first annual on-line conference on “the Training of Trainers” on 5 and 6 November, 2008. The confernce is co-sponsored by the Jisc funded Evolve network.

Who is the conference for?
The conference is for all those interested in the training and professional development of teachers and trainers. This includes teachers, trainers, tutors, researchers, managers and policy makers and other interested individuals.

About the conference
The conference will take place through the internet using the Elluminate conference tool. We hope this will not only reduce the carbon footprint of our activities, but will allow wide participation by those who might not be able to travel. The conference will utilise simple web-based tools and will be accessible by anyone with an internet connection and a web browser. For those of you not used to presenting on the internet, we will provide full technical support and a short pre-conference training course.

To find out more go to the conference technology page.

Conference themes
The conference will be organised around four themes:

• Theme 1 – The changing role of trainers in learning
• Theme 2: E-learning for trainers
• Theme 3: Work-based learning
• Theme 4: Support for the professional development of trainers

Go the the conference themes page to find out more.

Speakers

Speakers include:

Professor Alan Felstead and Nick Jewson, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK

Professor Alison Fuller, School of Education, University of Southampton, UK

Professor Alan Brown, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, UK

George Roberts, Oxford Brooks University, UK

Barry Nyhan, Ireland

Seija Mahlamäki-Kultanen and Anita Eskola-Kronqvist, HAMK, Finland.

Eduardo Figueira, Academus, Portugal

Simone Kirpal, Institut Technik und Bildung, Univeristy of Bremen, Germany

John Pallister, Wolsingham School

Cristina Costa, Pontydysgu, UK

Doris Beer, Germany

Vance Stevens, Abu Dubai

Carla Arena et al – United States, Japan, Ukraine, Argentina and the UK

Anne Fox, Denmark

Regina Lamscheck Nielsen, DEL, Denmark

Linda Castañeda, University of Murcia, Spain

Titles and abstracts for the presentations can be found on the programme page. Presentations will be 15 minutes allowing 15 minutes for discussion.

Exhibition

There will also be an on-line exhibition. Go to the exhibition page for details of how you can participate.

Registration

The conference is free. However, we would ask you to please register for the conference in advance as places are limited. Please go to the registration page. It is possible to register for one or more of the four seperate conference sessions.

More information
For more information email the project coordinator Simone Kirpal – kirpal @uni-bremen.de or the conference organiser Graham Attwell – graham10 @mac.com.

Missed the LIVE Sounds of the Bazaar from the Alt-C conference? Never mind – here is the podcast. The programme features live interviews with Laurie Phipps, George Siemens, Scott Wilson and many, many more. And poems by Steve Wheeler and George Roberts.

Thanks to Joe Roso who produced the programme, Josie Fraser who did the interviews, Cristina Costa who moderated the chat and everyone else who participated. Great fun and I hope we will do another one soon.

More reports on the conference in the next few days.

NB The first two minutes are a bit noisy – but d stick with it because we sorted it out very fast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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We are at ALT-C.

We arrived yesterday evening and the fun immediately started!

It is great to be among friends, to get together with those who we work with all year around online. It feels great. It makes the event more interesting. It might become the main reason this event will be reminded for. Bit isn’t it always like this? The People ..the people, they are the ones that really matter and impel us to to learn, explore new domains and revisited old areas of interested through a new lense – according to the resources they link us to, the ideas  they share, the persceptions and feeling the provoque in us.

Today Graham Attwell, Steven Warburton and I presented our sort paper about Evolve. Graham and Steven were brilliant as usual. From the 15 minutes of “fame”, there was particularly one thought that summed up exactly what I think to be one of the keys for sustainability of communitis, groups…or whatever you choose to call like-minded people who somehow come together online. Graham, trying to answer what is key to sustainabily referred to the emotional factor how that drives individual participation and effective communication. And this is so true!

How many of us remain in the same groups and communities we joined for the same reason that motivated us to join in the first place. I would risk to say that only very few, if any at all. We evolve with the communities we belong to, as they mature to. And what specially keeps us attached to the community is not necessarily the learning it enables or the information we gathered from there, but above all the learning relationships that get formed while doing so. The bonds. The feeling of comfortability of interacting with each other and the levels of trust that deepen with time, and which evolve as a natural reaction of the individuals involvements with each others’ learning process.

As we say in the webheads sharing is caring, and definitely everytime we are sharing something is not only because we came across something that interests us, but also because it is something that will interests others…most time more than us.

Blogging from the conference while lunch time …typing too fast …hope this makes any sense!  😉

Don’t foregt todays LIVE Sounds of the Bazaar radio broadcast from the AltC conference – 1725 UK summer time, 18.25 Central European summertime. Address is http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk/Emerge.m3u – not any other as mya have been mistakenlyposted earlier!!!!