Very busy last day on the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki on Friday and travelling on Saturday made it a bit difficulty to upload the podcast version of the last of our radio programmes. Further details will follow.
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Here is the podcast of our todays Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE internet radio show from the ECER 2010 conference in Helsinki. More details will follow soon.
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We had today the first of our three live internet radio shows from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki, FInland. Here is the podcast version of this 30 minute programmes.
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Just a quick note from the PLE2010 conference in Barcelona. We will be starting our Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE radio show (see news story below) at 1915 CET not 1830 as previously advertised.
UPDATE
Here are the podcast versions of our two live radio shows from the PLE-Conference in Barcelona. More details will follow.
Enjoy it!
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Just a quick post to be extended later. It is the second day of the ONLINE EDUCA Berlin 2009 and we just finished our todays LIVE Internet Radio programme. And you can listen here to todays show and our yesterday afternoon programme as well. Yesterdays we had little problems with the mixing deck at our stand. Very huge and proper live signal to the speakers but the signal to the streaming software was very low. But anyway enjoy listening to Sounds of the Bazaar.
Find now also our third and last live programme from this year’s ONLINE EDUCA Berlin here as a podcast.
Music Playlist of the show:
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This weeks meme has been change. Monday and Tuesday, we helped organise the Network of Trainers in Europe International On-line conference on Innovation in Training Practice. And today we have been working with the Create support programme in hosting a one day on-line conference, entitled Institutional Pragmatics, for the Jisc Institutional Innovation programme.
What does Institutional Pragmatics mean? The theme of the day was how can projects produce sustainable change at an institutional level and wider. What are the drivers of change and what are the barriers? How can these barriers be overcome. Who are the people who are important in a change process. Doe change occur from the top down or the bottom up or does it involve both.
The morning break out session heard presentations by different projects of their work. I was particularly impressed with the Erewhon and STEEPLE projects, both, if my memory serves be right, based in Oxford. Erewhon is an investigation into the deployment of existing university computing resources to mobile platforms, coupled with the implementation of relevant location based services and access to the Oxford VLE. The vision for the Steeple project is to streamline enterprise level podcasting and support a viable community around scalable, enterprise-level solutions, in the areas of automated video/audio capture, processing and delivery. But these are only two of more than 50 projects being funded by the UK Jisc. Details of all the projects, including the project blogs and access to outputs, can be found on the Support, Synthesis and Benefits Realisation (don’t be put off by the name!) web site.
The afternoon was largely given over to exploring issues around change. I was particularly interested in the question of whether we should be seeking to change thinking or practice. Whilst there obviously is a link between them, and thinking is important, for me it is changing practice which determines the way we teach and learn. It was also encouraging to note the importance given to engagement with students as both drivers but also as agents of change.
Our main role in the conference was to broadcast an internet radio programme, Sounds of the Bazaar, linking the different sessions, held on the Elluminate platform. Although the programmes were mainly music and chat, we made a number of interviews, which we are publishing here as podcasts.
They are well worth listening too. Two of the interviews, with Leo Care from the WeCAMP project and Mike Neary from the Learning Landscapes project, are both concerned with linking the physical design of university buildings to infrastructures for technology enhanced learning and about how design can promote learning networks. Wecamp has developed a Web-based interactive campus visualisation modelling platform to effect participation and collaboration. A major benefit, they say, is the ability to visualize scenarios being considered, aiding the communication with senior management and informing the decision making process. The e-modelling platform is designed to enable the University of Sheffield (UoS) to acquire and preserve over time its own organizational memory and knowledge in effective planning and uses of future learning spaces.Learning Landscapes is a research project looking at the ways in which academics work with colleagues in Estates to develop and manage innovation in the design of teaching and learning spaces in Higher Education.
The third interview was with James Wisdom about a consultancy report he has produced for SEDA in the UK on the Higher Education Framework proposals, unveiled by UK Business Minister, Peter Mandelson last week. These proposals may have far reaching consequences for the future of higher education in the UK, and in the thinking, for universities elsewhere. Thanks to all of them for agreeing to come on the Sounds of the Bazaar programme.
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In September, we organised a symposium on Personal Learning Environments at the the 2nd World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2009), “an international attempt to promote the dialogue for the main aspects of the Knowledge Society towards a better world for all.”
I rather rashly promised to publish the products from the symposium. It has taken a little longer than I had hoped, but here they are. The slides and links to the full papers are included in the text, the audio recordings of the presentations can be accessed at the bottom of this page.
The first speaker was Ricardo Torres. His paper was entitled “Using Web 2.0 applications as supporting tools for Personal Learning Environments.”
The abstract is as follows:
” This paper shows the results of a pilot study based on a proposed framework for building Personal Learning Environments using Web 2.0 tools. A group of 33 students from a Business Administration program were introduced to Web 2.0 tools in the context of an Information Systems class, during the academic year 2008-2009, and reflected about this experience through essays and interviews. The responses show evidence of learning and acquiring skills, strengthening social interactions and improvement in the organization and management of content and learning resources.”
You can download his full post here.
The second presentation was was by Cristina Costa from the University of Salford. Her paper was entitled “Teachers professional development through Web 2.0 environments.
Her abstract reads as follows:
“Teacher professional development is no longer synonymous with acquiring new teaching techniques, it is rather about starting new processes as to engage with new forms of learning, reflected in the practice of teaching. With easy access to the panoply of online communications tools, new opportunities for further development have been enabled. Learning within a wider community has not only become a possibility, but rather a reality accessible to a larger number of individuals interested in pursuing their learning path both in a personalised and networked way. The web provides the space for learning, but the learning environment is decidedly dependent on the interrelationships that are established amongst individuals. The effectiveness of the web is reflected in the unconventional opportunities it offers for people to emerge as knowledge producers rather than information collectors. Hence, it is not the tools that most matter to develop a learning environment where more personalized learning opportunities and collective intelligence prospers as the result of personal and collaborative effort. Although web tools provide the space for interaction, it is the enhancement of a meaningful learning atmosphere, resulting in a joint enterprise to learn and excel in their practice, which will transform a space for learning into an effective, interactive learning environment. The paper will examine learning and training experiences in informal web environments as the basis for an open discussion about professional development in web 2.0 environments.”
You can download her full paper here.
The third presentation was by Tobias Nelkner from the University of Paderborn. He talked about the development of a widget infrastructure to support Personal Learning Environments. Here is his abstract:
“Widget based mashups seem to be a proper approach to realise self-organisable Personal Learning Environments. In comparison to integrated and monolithic pieces of software developed for supporting certain workflows, widgets provide small sets of functionality. The results of one widget can hardly be used in other widgets for further processing. In order to overcome this gap and to provide an environment allowing easily developing PLEs with complex functionality, the based on the TenCompetence Widget Server [1], we developed a server that allows widgets to exchange data. This key functionality allows developers to create synergetic effects with other widgets without increasing the effort of developing widgets nor having to deal with web services or similar techniques. Looking for available data and events of other widgets, developing the own widget and uploading it to the server is an easy way publishing new widgets. With this approach, the knowledge worker is enabled to create a PLE with more sophisticated functionality by choosing the combination of widgets needed for the current task. This paper describes the Widget Server developed within the EU funded IP project Mature, which possibilities it provides and which consequences follow for widget developer.
You can download his full paper here.
The fourth was Maria Perifanou from the University of Athens. She talked of her experiences of using microblogging for language learning. the abstract reads:
‘Learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge and instruction is a process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge’. Can this process of learning be fun for the learner? Successful learning involves a mixture of work and fun. One of the recent web 2.0 services that can offer great possibilities for learning is Microblogging. This kind of motivation can raise students’ natural curiosity and interest which promotes learning. Play can also promote excitement, enjoyment, and a relaxing atmosphere. As Vygotsky (1933) advocates, play creates a zone of proximal development (ZDP) in children. According to Vygotsky, the ZDP is the distance between one’s actual developmental level and one’s potential developmental level when interacting with someone and/or something in the social environment. Play can be highly influential in learning. What happens when play becomes informal learning supported by web 2.0 technologies? Practical ideas applied in an Italian foreign language classroom using microblogging to promote fun and informal learning showed that microblogging can enhance motivation.”
Maria’s full paper can be downloaded here.
The final speaker was Graham Attwell from Pontydysgu. He talked about the European Commission Mature-IP project which is developing a Personal Learning and Maturing Environment. His paper was jointly authored with John Cook and andrew Ravenscroft from the Metropolitan University of London. Here is the abstract:
“The development of Technology Enhanced Learning has been dominated by the education paradigm. However social software and new forms of knowledge development and collaborative meaning making are challenging such domination. Technology is increasingly being used to mediate the development of work process knowledge and these processes are leading to the evolution of rhizomatic forms of community based knowledge development. Technologies can support different forms of contextual knowledge development through Personal Learning Environments. The appropriation or shaping of technologies to develop Personal Learning Environments may be seen as an outcome of learning in itself. Mobile devices have the potential to support situated and context based learning, as exemplified in projects undertaken at London Metropolitan University. This work provides the basis for the development of a Work Orientated MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE).”
You can download the paper here.
Podcast music is ‘Miss is a sea fish’ by Ehma from the Jamendo web site.
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Last week we hosted a series of radio shows to accompany the Jisc SSBR Institutional Innovation project conference on Institutional Impact.
And here are the podcasts.
The lunchtime programme features interviews with Jisc programme managers, Lawrie Phipps and Ruth Drysdale.
The afternoon show has an interview with Howard Noble from the Green ICT project.
Guests on the evening show include:
Dirk Stieglitz selected the music, produced the programme and undertook the post programme processing.
My thanks to Dirk and all my guests for making a great series of programmes.
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Lately I have got excited about the potential of mobile devices for learning. Partly this is due to the accessibility of such devices and their growing functionality but more it is because of the potential of mobile devices to enable situated or contextual learning. Elearning until now, perhaps because of the domination of universities and to a lesser extent academic schools in implementing educational technology, elearning has focused on academic or disciplinary knowledge. Yet much of the knowledge we use is vocational or occupational in nature. Mobile applications can take advantage of different aspects of context. Of course this is a challenge to institutions, as well as for developers. I have been discussing these issues over the last four or five weeks with John Cook and Andrew Ravenscroft from London Metropolitan Univeristy.
And yesterday at the Jisc Instiutional Innovation conference, John Cook presented both ideas and examples of his work in this area. The abstract for his presentation read:
“How can learning activities that take place outside formal institutions, on platform of the learners choice, be brought into institutional learning? New digital media can be regarded as cultural resources that can enable the bringing together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution with those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions.The big problem is that reports show that Social Software and Google are not enabling the critical, creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.”
Here are the slides from his presentation. And below you can find a podcast of his keynote.
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This Thursday features a day of LIVE internet radio to support the Jisc Institutional Innovation programme online conference on Institutional Impact.
We will be broadcasting four programmes during the day.
The Morning Programme
The morning programme starts at 10.00 CET (9.00 UK Summer Time) and will run until 1215 CET. The will feature music and chat. At around 11.00 CET we will brodacst Professor John Cook’s keynote speech on “Scaffolding the Mobile Wave”
The Lunch Time Show
The lunch time broadcast will be from 1400 – 1430 CET (1300 – 1330 UK Summer Time. The show will feature interviews with Ruth Drysdale from Jisc and David Morris plus more music.
The Afternoon Show
The mid afternoon show from 1600 – 1630 CET (1500 – 1530 UK Summer Time) will feature guest slots from Howard Noble from the Low Carbon ICT project and from Luis Francisco Pedro form Portugal on introducing PLEs throughout the institution.
The Evening Show
The evening show kicks off at 1930 CET 18.30 UK summer Time. Besides providing a chance for quick reflections on the conference, it will also be featuring interviews with leading researchers and practitioners on institutional innovation from all over Europe (we have some great gusts lined up – I will try to provide you with a trailer for them tomorrow). From 2000 CET (1900 UK Summer Time) onwards it will also be streamed into Second Life for participants in the Institutional Innovation conference social event. The show ends at 2030 CET (19.30 UK Summer Time).
How to listen to the programme.
You can access the internet radio feed by going to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u in your browser. This will open the stream in your MP3 programme of choice (e.g, iTunes).
Please feel free to just sit back and enjor the show. But if you would like to come on the show live to provide your reflections and ideas about the issues being discussed then please skype or email Graham Attwell – graham10 [at] mac [dot] com or GrahamAttwell on skype.
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.
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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.