The main aim of the TACCLE project was to help teachers improve their use of technology for e-learning, and to do this they created a handbook. In addition they provided courses to guide teachers in technological programmes that although simple once understood can be very difficult initially. The launch for the handbook was held in Ghent, Belgium along with a day of workshops, which around 200 teachers and trainee teachers attended. Here is some feedback from the day.

Video and blog post by Jo Turner-Attwell.

You may remember a few days ago I lamented the lack of European survey data on how young people are using social media. And now along comes this presentation by Andrea Pozzali reporting on a survey of Italian students on just that subject. some of the translations are a little strange, some of the results even more surprising (do Italian students really not read books?). But this shows much promise – would anyone be interested in a (self funded?) project to undertake such a study across different countries?

NB No time for a longer post – have to go to Ghent. But Jo Turner Attwell is writing a longer commentary on the findings presented here.

Just spent half an hour checking around blogs and twitter to see what is new on a Monday morning. And I was interested to see the latest survey from Pew Internet (just an aside – why cannot we organise as thorough a survey in Europe as Pew does for the US?).

The latest Pew Internet & American Life Project survey asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020 and they provide the following summary of the (very substantial) report:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing arms race, with the crackers who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
• Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.”

I will be coming back to many of these issues in the next few posts. But I am particularly interested in the issue of the division between personal and work time and between physical and virtual reality – although I am not sure about some of the terminology. two weeks ago we ran a workshop on Digital identities at the European Conference on Educational Research in Vienna as part of the Eduserve Rhizome project on Digital Identities. We are working on a short video on the workshop which should come out later this week. Most of the issues arising from the workshop were as we would have expected and in line with similar workshops we have organised in the UK. But what was surprising were some of the discussions in the workshop especially around the issues of privacy, personal spaces and work . personal life issues. Why surprising? Mainly because there was such a divergence of feelings around these issues. there were some 18 participants in the workshop from 15 different countries. And it appears that attitudes towards privacy and work / personal life divisions are heavily influenced by culture. This finding requires far more investigation than we were able to undertake in a short workshop. But it does appear that in different countries there are very different attitudes towards for instance what data should be private and the degree ot which entries on a social networking sites should be viewed as part of professional activities.

One participant provided an example of where a teacher had expressed personal opinions on a social networking site which were seen as racist by parents of some of the students and resulted – if my memory is right – in them being dismissed. Some felt this was reasonable, given that such an opinions would effect their ability as a teacher. Others felt that however objectionable such opinions this infringed on rights of personal free speech in a non work related forum.

Steven Warburton summaries the dissussion on the Rhizome project blog:

The “richness in nationalities immediately foregrounded what is an often overlooked dimension in discussions around digital identity – namely the impact of cultural difference. Different cultures both create and consume their [digital] identities in different ways. This was most keenly reflected in the shared conversations around where we perceive the boundary between our public and private lives. The mass use of social services such as Facebook can appear to have a homogenising effect, erasing cultural distinctions through normalised ’social-networking’ practices.”

I have not read the full Pew report. But issues like this will not go away and I am intrigued to find out in which ways the experts Pew interviewed see the mixed impact on basic social relations

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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Just a quick comment on the ongoing debate about whether twitter is killing blogging (for an excellent summary of the arguments see the Cloudscape on the subject. The picture above, from the stats plug in from the back end of my blog, shows the referrers to the Pontydysgu site today. Referrers means just that, where they have come from.

In past times the main search engines, Google and Bling, would have been the major entrance point, other than people who move from one page to another within the site, thus showing Pontydysgu as the referrer.

Nowadays twitter increasingly dominates the referrers list (especially given that my Facebook account displays an aggregated twitter feed, as does Netvibes). This suggests a more symbiotic relation between Twitter and blogs, where Twitter is used as a trusted source of literature and reference, rather than just an alternative form of blogging.

Last weeks video adventure at the European Conference on Educational Research (#ECER2009) – where we interviewed some 40 or 50 participants on video plus more on audio – has provoked quite some discussion on how we can use educational technology to support conferences. First lets provide a little background information.

ECER is a long running and popular conference. It attracted some 2050 enrolled delegates and covers a multitude of themes in educational research, organised by semi autonomous networks and coordinated by the European Educational Research Association (EERA). Whilst interest and participation in ECER is growing fast in terms of size, the conference is probably at its maximum. As ex EERA Secretary General, Martin Lawn explained to us on video, ECER is traditional hosted in university accommodation and few – if any – European universities have space for many more delegates than 2000. And talking to delegates – whilst they appreciated the breadth of the conference and the chance to talk to researchers from different areas of educational research – the very size of the conference was felt to be problematic. With many sessions running in parallel it was difficult to select sessions from the 229 page paper based programme.

ECER has done little with technology in the past. The web site (based on Typo 3) provides access to a PDF version of the programme and to standard information on travel and accommodation but little more. Although the use of technology for learning is obviously a theme in some of the sessions and networks (notably the Vocational Education and Training Network) and there is a relatively small network focused on ICT and learning (Network 16), Technology Enhanced Learning has never been a major theme at ECER.

There are four main arguments for embracing more technology. First is to ease the undoubted difficulties in administration and managing the conference. Second is to provide timely updated information to participants. Thirdly is to make the face to face conference more accessible, for instance through interactive programmes. Fourthly is to facilitate networking between delegates. but perhaps the most compelling argument for the use of technology is the idea of Open Education. Technology could allow the conference to turn itself outwards and to allow participation by those unable to afford either the time to attend or the quite expensive delegate fee. Access is obviously particularly problematic for younger researchers – who possibly might benefit most from a conference of this nature. Rather than being an episodic event on the educational research calendar, ECER could be at the centre of what is called by the European Commission the European Research Area. At the same time this would allow ECER to grow, whilst remaining limited in terms of physical attendance.

So at a practical level what technologies could be used?

First and most important is to set up a social networking site for the conference. Cloudworks, BuddyPress, Ning or Mixxt are all possibilities. However, in my mind CrowdVine is probably the best for the ability to create individual conference programmes. If this was done, I am sure it would encourage more delegates to attend network events, other than those of their own immediate network.

Attention needs to be paid as to how to provide rich information about sessions. I posed this question in a previous blog post about the #AltC conference. Seb Schmoller from ALT put forward a number of interesting suggestions in a comment on the post:

“What is it about a session that you need to know to make a decision about whether to go to it?
Inclusion of a micro-abstract – 140 characters max?
Themes addressed?
Type of session (demo, workshop, symposium, etc)?
Level of experience aimed at?
Where on tech/learning spectrum it lies?
Extent to which it has a strong data or numerical component?
X?
Y?”

Other comments and suggestions included encouraging presenters to make a short video or audio about their contributions. In terms of the participants to ECER (for the most part non-techies), this would require a very simple web based facility to do this – maybe CrowdVine could consider this?

Thirdly stream the keynote sessions and other selected sessions and publicise this in advance. Encouragement and support could also be provided to the different networks to consider streaming some of their sessions. A second screen should be provided in streamed sessions for allowing feedback from those participating remotely.

Fourthly continue what we did this year in producing videos and podcasts from the conference (probably with a little more organisation and preparation than we did this year 🙂 ).

Fifthly, consideration needs to be paid as to how to easily allow presenters to upload their papers and presentations to a central or distributed repository. ECER does not require full papers to be produced and this is a weakness of the conference. However, VETNET has now over 60 of the 90 or so presentations on-line and other networks should be encouraged to follow suit.

One small but key measure would be to adopt a common hashtag and publicise this in advance. As far as I can see only four or five delegates twittered this years conference – but it may be that different people used different tags.

One way of encouraging more use of Twitter – or whatever microblogging service is trending next year – would be to distribute large screens around conference spaces. These could not only be used to show real time aggregated feedback, but also to provide information on upcoming conference sessions.

This is of course only a starting point. But if these steps were taken, they could allow ECER to turn itself outwards, not only to researchers in Europe but to researchers in other continents. With the announcement of the formation of the World Education Research Association at this years ECER, it would be a timely move forward

I don’t often write about software releases. But whilst the latest beta release of Google Wave has dominated the technical press and blogs, for social networks and learning the BuddyPress 1.1 release may prove just as significant.

BuddyPress is a long running project to turn the WordPress blogging software into a social networking application. And very good and powerful it is too. But the earlier releases were quite hard to install and style. The 1.1 release makes setting up and styling BuddyPress almost as easy as WordPress.

Why is Buddypress important for education? Social software is of increasing importance for learning. Unlike the more traditional educational technology approaches through Management Information Systems and Virtual Learning Environments, social software offers far more potential for informal and collaborative learning. And as Jo Turner Attwell wrote in a guest contribution to the Wales Wide Web yesterday students are able to create a virtual space to manage their own learning, whilst using social networking as a support system to scaffold their learning. And this is indeed what many students have done, with or without the support of teachers or educational institutions. Increasingly, educational institutions have begun to establish their own social networking spaces on Facebook, Ning, Google, Twitter or one or more of the myriad of social software services offered by commercial providers.

However, there remains several problems. Firstly such services allow only limited customisation in terms of functionality. Although open APIs may allow mash ups and some extendibility, the core software remains under the control of the provider. Secondly many of these services rely on advertising as their business model, although some will provide advert free sites for educational providers. But more importantly it raises questions of who owns the data. Of course terms of service differ between social software services. But in the most extreme cases *e.g. Facebook) the terms of service basically specify that they own the data. Furthermore it can be very difficult to extract your own personal data from such platforms, making it hard, for example, to develop an personal learning record or e-Portfolio, when access to personal work is restricted.

BuddyPress is open source software, with a growing and vibrant development community. Of course we already have Joomla, Drupal and Elgg. But BuddyPress goes further than these systems in providing support for to easily setting up and support groups and communities. It promises to allow the development of rich social networking services based on locally installed and controlled web sites. It can be freely customised to suit different learning needs. And the data belongs to the user! Pontydysgu are developing two sites for continuing professional development using BuddyPress. We will keep you informed of how this work progresses.

I have a 18 year old intern student, Jo Turner-Attwell, working for me. When I was in Vienna at the ECER conference, I left her the task of looking at Vygotky’s work in relation to Personal Learning Environments. This is part of the research we are undertaking in the Mature-ip project. And here is her summary. Pretty good start I think!

“Vygotsky died in 1934, almost a century ago, however his theories are becoming more relevant than they ever were during the course of his live. In particular the Zone of Proximal Development and the theories developed from this idea are more important than ever before. In addition to this his strong themes of the importance of social interaction and learning with assistance are being more closely looked at.

The zone of proximal development is the area between what an individual can achieve on their own and what they can achieve with assistance. Vigotsky’s definition is ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers’. It is easy to understand through the idea of school text books. Those that are not too hard and not too easy, so challenging whilst not being beyond a students capabilities, are the optimal level of difficulty and right in the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky believed that learning shouldn’t follow development, but rather should lead it. A student should constantly be reaching slightly beyond their capabilities rather than working within them.

The method of scaffolding has been developed from Vgotsky’s theories. This is the concept that teachers or trainers, should simply assist their student until they are ready to act alone. A good example of this is a bike, moving from stabilisers, to someone running behind, to riding alone. This overlaps with the concept of a zone of proximal development, where some forms of scaffolding work for some people and not for others. Zones of proximal development vary and often different types of scaffolding are needed to reach the same goal. Vygotsky’s theories suggest students should lead their learning and teachers simply assist and rather than judging students on what they know in standardised tests, learning should be done through looking closely at their zone of proximal development. This allows learning to be developed around the needs of the learner, rather than learners trying to fit their needs into current standardised curriculums. This is particularly important as the current examination system can fail to support students who struggle in examination conditions, or excel in the practical side of learning.

This links in well with the concept of Personal Learning Environments or PLEs. The idea that the student themselves creates a virtual space to manage their own learning, whilst allowing room for social networking as a support system. This could combine the informal areas of learning with a more academic e-portfolio type system. This in theory is a fantastic idea, particularly in the way of social networking, which I do think it is important teachers begin to recognise more as a good teaching support method. However I do believe that this would have to be specific to formal learning. Types of informal learning would continue on separate social networking sites where students could interact privately among themselves. During my A Level studies it was not uncommon for teachers to assist their students through current informal online social networking systems as teachers began to take on a more friend-like role. However for my 14 year old sister this sort of student teacher relationship would be unthinkable. Not because I feel it would be inappropriate but more because I know that she would see it as an invasion of her privacy. This need for privacy in addition to support I believe would also exist within employer and employee relationships. This can clearly be seen from current issues of employers judging people’s employability on their facebook sites. I know I personally present myself differently upon my facebook site to the way I like to be seen in my work environment, but still feel I benefit from areas where I can communicate with my employer online, currently I use skype. Therefore I believe there is the need to keep formal learning environments and informal learning environments apart. Limiting the room for PLEs to grow.

A more significant problem I had was how one standardised PLE system could be used to support different types of students, particularly those who were better with practical studies. If the idea of a Personal Learning Environment was that an individual invented it, then how could teachers assist with the development of this?  How could it be standardised? Also surely teaching this would turn it into formal education and would students still see it as their own space, and could teachers cope with only having access to certain areas? How could student that need more help receive that help through a similar model to a student that needed less?

However this is only one area where I feel that Vgotsky’s theories are relevant. I believe that judging students on their zone of proximal development and their potential for learning could allow students that struggle under exam pressure and to work within time limits to receive the grades they deserve. I know many students far smarter than myself who when put in an exam situation struggled and received lower grades than me. My mind being better suited to the remembering of large amounts of data, rather than me necessarily understanding the work better. When first asked the question of how we could measure this I drew a blank. But in fact part of Vygotsky’s theories is less capable students being shown things by more capable students, therefore why couldn’t students understanding be measured on their ability to convey the information they have learnt, maybe even after being shown how by a more able other. Allowing a student to reach the top of their Zone Of Proximal development. In my own admission this also has its flaws in that some of the most intelligent people struggle with teaching and I’m no educational expert so do not have the answers to these flaws. However this did lead me towards ideas of widening the way people are assessed, meaning ongoing assessment of a students progress and a students ability teach could simply make up parts of achieving a grade along with traditional examinations and coursework. If informal learning is as important as formal learning varying the way students are assessed can only work in their favour. However this does again lead into difficulties, as with anything, in that students may receive closer grades, and it may be difficult to differentiate from students who previously would have been placed in very different catorgories.

Also at the root of many of the differentiation of students who may excel in informal learning but not in formal is the subjects that are classified as worth studying. What is worth learning? I found this question upon one of the sites on which Vygotsky’s work was studied and it made me think. School curriculums are so very narrow in comparison with the potential in university courses where the opportunities of what to study are endless. Technology in particular I feel is under represented. When I first came to Pontydysgu I had no idea what a learning platform or PLE were and couldn’t work many of the standard systems on a Mac. These technological systems seen at the forefront of education are barely heard about within education systems. In a technological age I cannot help but wonder why this sort of important knowledge is not being taught, why students aren’t studying the more complex area of technology. We use technology everyday, probably know more than many of our teachers, yet it is not part of any standardised curriculums, it is all informal. I had to quickly learn how to edit audio and video, work a spreadsheet, funnily enough mainly through scaffolding techniques. Audio and video in particular is the kind of technology that only my peers who learnt informally would be able to do. This is most likely because of the lack of knowledge of teachers, not as a criticism of them but rather an emphasis on the fact that the technology we use so often today has mostly come about since many of them finished learning. This to me suggests the need for some sort of lifelong learning system, which again the PLE can support. Although the problems of standardising appear again, there is clearly a need for the general population to have a way to keep up to date with fast changing technologies as technology is moving on before it has the opportunity to be properly implemented. Even in my sixthform a student himself bought in a wireless rooter due to the lack of one, so that students could use their laptops and access the school network. Although moving a long way from Vgotsky the roots in his theories can still be seen in that social interaction is needed for this sort of technology to be fully accessible to everyone. Different people will need different methods to help them grasp these sort of technological systems, particularly as I believe teachers would struggle as much as, if not more, than students.”

I am at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Vienna. It is a big conference with 2050 registered delegates. ECER is organised through into 27 or so different strands, each run by a network, on issues like the Philosophy of Education, the Professional Development of Teachers, Pre-school Education or so on.

I am working with VETNET, the Vocational Education and Training Network, which with some 120 delegates is the largest of the networks. As part of a small project promoted by VETNET we are producing multimedia from the conference. It is fairly hard work and a lot of fun.

But the main point of the project for me is to demonstrate the potential use of ICT for enhancing the ECER conference. Despite many presentations dealing with different issues related to technology, and a relatively small network, Network 16, focusing on ICT in education, there is little use of technology at the conference, other than using data projectors for powerpoint! As far as I can see only 4 people have twittered using the #ECER2009 hashatag. There is no conference social networking site. The programme comes in a big printed book and, with so many sessions, is difficult to follow. There are no data screens, no live streaming, no means for involving a wider audience unable to attend the conference. Few delegates have a computer open during presentations (despite an excellent, free wireless network), indeed I suspect many frown on me typing away (and twittering the conference) during sessions.

Yet ECER organisers I have talked to are interested in these ideas. It is just that it lies outside their experience. And indeed, given the lack of twittering, I suspect that the culture (or community) of educational research has not yet embraced these technologies. It is certainly a reality check for those of us working in the educational technology community. And given the importance of educational research for the future of teaching and learning, I think it is worrying. If the teachers of teachers, have little or no engagement with social networking technologies, it may be a long time before education finally engages in this area.

NB We have done some wonderfull interviews (audio and video) with many people at the conference. Hopefully we will start getting these online next week.

Between the meetings we are working hard on new web sites, using a variety of different software.  Here is one of my favourites. This new social networking site for the European Educational Research Association Vocational education and Training Networks (VETNET) has been created using Mixxt. Mixxt is a bit Ning like. But it is advert free and somehow (perhaps a bit irrationally) I trust the developers more than I do Ning.

We are also working on sites using Buddypress, Cloudworks and WritetoReply. As ever, usability is one of our main aims. Most of the users we work with are not technology experts, neither do they usually have any experience with social software.

Anyway, here is the invitation we have sent to members of the VETNET  network. And it is extended to you!

“VETNET has set up a new social networking web site.

The web site is designed to promote networking and collaboration between researchers in VET in Europe. It also provides information on VETNET activities and particularly on the VETNET conference.

Unlike other VETNET web spaces this site has been designed to make it easy for you to do things yourselves and to share ideas with other members.

You can join the site by going to http://vetnet.mixxt.org/ and then creating an account using the sign up here button. Then log in with your new account details.

Things you can do

• Fill in your profile
• Comment on other peoples’ profiles and leave them a message
• Add people as friends
• Add to the existing discussion or start a new one
• Upload a file – e.g. your conference paper
• Vote in the poll
• Get maps of the conference locations
• Download the conference draft programme
• Add details of your conference session to the events page

And much more

We hope you will enjoy using the site.”