Regular readers will know of our slightly irreverent, somewhat wacky fun LIVE internet radio show, The Sounds of the Bazaar. We like making Sounds and form feedback we gather our listeners enjoy it too.

But, for some time now, we have been wanting to branch out and make other types of programmes. We experimented with two documentary programmes, The Dragons Den, earlier this year.

And now Jisc has commissioned a pilot of a new programme, the e-learning show. The pilot programme will be broadcast next Thursday, 21 May at 1800 UK Summer Time, 1900 Central European Time.

The following blurb provides the rundown for the show:

“Thursday, 21 May sees the pilot programme of a new Jisc live internet radio programme, ‘the Elearning Show’. The programme which is to be broadcast at 1800 – 1855 UK summer time, is based on issues raised at the recent Jisc Lifelong Learning Symposium.

These issues include how university and college cultures need to change to support work based learning, who the new students are and what are their needs, how e-Portfolios can be used both for recording learning and for providing information, advice and guidance and the use of mobile technologies.

The programme considers both current and emergent practices in elearning and the development of policies to support such practice.

The programme will be presented by Graham Attwell and guests include Derek Longhurst from Foundation Degree Forward, Clive Church from Edexel, Lucy Stone from Leicester College, Tony Toole from the University of Glamorgan, Bob Bell, HE in FE consultant for the northern region, Sandra Winfield from Nottingham University and Rob Ward from the Centre for Recording Achievement

The programme will also feature a live panel. with the opportunity for listeners to skype or email their questions and comments and their will be a live chat room for listeners.

To listen to the programme go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u This will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice.

You can take part in the chat room at http://tinyurl.com/sounds08. Just add your name and press enter – no password required.

If you like to send us questions for the panel in advance of the programme, email Graham Attwell – graham10 [at] mac [dot] com or skype to GrahamAttwell.”

Although the programme is based on developments in the UK many of the issues to be discuassed on the programme will have relevance for listeners interested in the use of technologies for learning wherever they are.

And if you are missing the old Sounds of the Bazaar, don’t worry, we haven’t gone away. The next programme planned in that series will be broadcast live from the ProLearn european Summer School in Slovakia in the first week of June. Further details as soon as we can agree on a timeslot for the programme.

As promised yesterday, some more thoughts on the Educamp09 conference held last weekend in Ilmenau in Germany.

The overwhelming memory is of the atmosphere and buzz around the event. much of the reason for this was the superb organisation. Just small things really – a selection of different coffee, cartons of juice available throughout the conference. Great lighting and sofas to sit on to chat. Good music -all that kind of thing.

Another thing was the tech. This was not just a conference – it was an event. Every session was streamed out live. The sessions with online presenters worked. Big screens projecting the twitter stream. Very cool.

A lot of this was because it was an unconference. Apart from the opening panel discussion and a couple of invited international speakers, all the sessions were negotiated on the Saturday morning. No abstracts, no agonising over whether papers would be accepted. And the programme was simply filled in on the spot on a computer and then projected all over the conference spaces. No fiddling around to find out what session was where (Alt-C take note). And it was run by a volunteer organisation relying on (probably too small) sponsorship for funding. No funding bodies to keep on board, no policy bodies who had to have their egos massaged. A conference for the community run by the community.

There were no fees (Alt-C, Educa On-line – take note again). One result of this is that the conference was accessible to students and to teachers. The largest grouping at Educamp were teachers. And that brings another perspective to discussions on technology. The teachers came to share their own experiences and to learn as part of their practice.

If course the confernce was aided by the growing buzz around Web 2.0 and learning in the German speaking countries. I personally suspect that this is helped by the previous relatively low level of technology adoption in education. there is less baggage in the form of legacy technologies to be overcome.

The buzzwords from the confernce were “Bildung Hacken“. What is that? It is a term coming out of the Hacking Education confernce held in New York on March 10. However, Bildung Hacken is not really a precise translation – it means more in German – anyone care to attempt a translation / explanation?

The next Educamp is planned for Graz, in November I think. I am planning to be there. But here is a thought. Why not a UK based Educamp – and if we were to hold it at the same time we could link the two conferences electronically.

I am speaking at the Plymouth elearning conference on 23 and 24 April. Steve Wheeler asked me to produce a summary of my presentation for the conference publication.

This was a problem. Firstly, I am bad at writing summaries. Secondly, I never know quite what I will say until I say it. But finally I have sat down and written it. I quite like it. I think it provides a summary of the different ideas around which we are centring our work at Pontydysgu.

Social software, personal learning environment and the future of education

The presentation  will look at the impact of recent developments in social software and the possible impact on education.

The origins of the word curricula, coming from the Latin word    ‘currere’ – a running race, a course or career can be contrasted to the origins of the word learning coming from the old Gothic word ‘Gleis’, meaning to tack, to follow and to find a path, the Gothic ‘leis’ which means to know and the the old English ‘learnien’ – to get knowledge.

Our education systems and institutions have been based around the original idea of curriculum, with winners and losers, the
same starting point and same finish point for all participants and with progression being seen as
a straight line between the two. Above all our educational institutions have been developed around the idea of homogeneity.

Such an idea of homogeneity was reinforced by the first industrial revolutions which led to the expansion of a schooling system to develop the skills needed by the workforce in a production economy.

The introduction of social software allows the exploration of different  learning pathways, and learning through exploring, wandering and funding the way.  Social networking tools allow learners to make connections, to  take individual choices about the direction of their learning within personal learning networks. Learning is based on bricolage – on making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand, regardless of their original purpose.

Teachers and trainers have a new role as mentors and guides to scaffold and support learning.

In terms of the future development of educational technology we need tools to help explore pathways, develop connections and to take control of own learning. This is turn requires a greater degree of engagement between developers, educational technologists and practitioners.

Education systems need greater flexibility to provide learners with their own space, to work at their own speed and at their own level, to define their own knowledge areas and make their own connections. Institutions can take the first steps in this by unlocking their resources and opening up their VLEs, by providing more and different ways of accessing services and by focusing IT support on services rather than systems.

The emergence of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is an important  step in this respect. PLEs can provide tools to help learners make and sustain connections, to help learners organise, scaffold and take responsibility for their learning and to manage and handle learning content. PLEs can also provide tools for recording and representing and sharing the learning ‘bricolage’
.

The emergence of new patterns and forms of learning based on social software provide a great opportunity to extend learning opportunities and to embed learning in every day work and living. At the same time it poses a challenge to educations systems and institutions who no longer have a monopoly on knowledge development and transmission.

“But the more interesting question is whether this will mean any change in the culture of Facebook – always assuming that it has any discernible culture.”

An interesting question raised in an otherwise somewhat flip article in the Guardian, commenting on the news that most Facebook users are over 25 and the fastest growing demographic group on Facebook are woman over 55, according to new research from Inside Facebook. (The article is curious, the author appears unsure as to whether a newspaper of the Guardian’s perceived gravitas should report seriously on the demographic makeup of Facebook users).

One thing this research does confirm, once again, is the misleading nature of terms like the ‘Net Generation; and ‘Digital Natives’.

But does Facebook have a discernible culture? No, I would say, Facebook is merely a social networking platform. But of course communities if users develop culture. And our use of adoption and use of tools and media help shape our cultures. Social networks are hardly new. it is just that digital platforms and tools allow the development of distributed networks – over space and time – and allow the sharing and of artefacts  developed as part of that culture. witness the way Blip.fm (yes I know I keep going on about it) allows us to develop networks and communities around music.

According to Wenger (1998), a community of practice defines itself along three dimensions:

• What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members.
• How it functions – mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity.
• What capability it has produced – the shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time. (see, also Wenger 1999: 73-84).

Most communities on Facebook or Blip.fm are not communities of practice as defined by Wenger. They might better be defined as communities of interest. But they do show features of the different dimensions identified by Wenger especially in terms of capability and that capability is in turn mediated by tools in the form of affordances. And yes, of course communities have cultures!

References

Wenger, E. (1998) ‘Communities of Practice. Learning as a social system’, Systems Thinker, http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml. Accessed March 27, 2009.

Wenger E 1999, Communities of Practice. Learning, meaning and identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Last nights rant against the idea of digital natives seems to have caused a bit of a stir.
My frustration with the term is not just because it is bad research. It is because we need models and concepts for understanding the profound changes emanating for the ways in which we are using technologies for communicating, sharing and learning. I work both as a part time researcher and a part time developer / implementer (and part time administrator and part time office cleaner! Research is important for us in helping design applications to support learning and working. Of course ideally we would do it ourselves but time and work pressure precludes the in-depth studies I would like to undertake (to say nothing of shortage of funding). So research findings and models are important in informing design and development. And Prensky’s model of the digital native is just wrong. It leads us down a blind alley and diverts us away from an understanding of the real world.

Anyway the rant followedthe joint Jisc Emerge project / Educamp open online seminar on Enterprise 2.0. If you missed the seminar you can watch the recording on the Jisc Elluminate site.

And here is a few of the many tweets I received in answer to my 140 character version of the post – Lets stop taking about digital natives – it is such a useless term – http://tinyurl.com/caemd3

jamesclay @GrahamAttwell and let’s stop talking about the Google Generation while we’re at it.

jurijmlotman @GrahamAttwell  you are right, but maybe the term is useful for tactical reasons #changemanagement

kevhickeyuk @GrahamAttwell Have you read Prenskys paper where even he is moving away from these terms?

darkone @GrahamAttwell Agreed! After careful consideration, we have concluded the ‘digital natives, beloved of the mee-ja, are merely early-adopters

dianadell @josiefraser @GrahamAttwell What term should we use to replace “digital natives” … do we need a label at all? Millennial learners

jpallis001 @GrahamAttwell    learners, the environment and experiences are different, their expectations are different  but

cspannagel @GrahamAttwell I fully agree with you. This would change the focus from “generation” to “competence”

josiefraser @GrahamAttwell hope you can make the digital literacy discussion on the 27th http://icanhaz.com/dldebate

hwilliamson @GrahamAttwell the isthmus project agrees, see http://tinyurl.com/4hxvfe

tmartinowen @GrahamAttwell  I think Vygotsky and Leont’ev have a fairly good framework on how mediation changes our being in the world

tmartinowen @GrahamAttwell  Activity Theory http://is.gd/nG6M

CosmoCat RT @GrahamAttwell Change(s in) how we think, how we learn. ..is also situated in diversity rather than dichotomy http://tinyurl.com/d2u38z

No real time to blog today – much too much admin to allow such trivial things! But I couldn’t resist giving myself a short break from the spreadsheets to comment on two of today’s twitter memes.

The first is the draconian new Conditions of Service released by Facebook. As Chris Walters points out anything you upload to Facebook can now be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

That language is the same as in the old TOS, but there was an important couple of lines at the end of that section that have been removed:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Furthermore, the “Termination” section near the end of the TOs states:

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.”

The second is the goings on in New Zealand where the protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A‘ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny has led to a viral campaign to black out avatars on social networking sites.

Is it it just that the law is an ass? Or is it that legislators are quite happy to take action to prevent individuals sharing files, sharing ideas and creating new works, but bow down to the real pirates – the Facebooks of the world. Money still counts when it comes to the law.

Here I am again, after a long period of silence. Last spring I posted a series of blog entries.  I tried to analyse the change of the cooperation climate in European educational programmes and the implications for researchers. As we know, research in vocational education and training (or VET reserch)as we call it) has profited of the creative phases of European cooperation in the late 1990s. However in the recent years there has been a loss of interest in European or trans-national cooperation.

I started to look at the big picture with observer’s questions, such as:

“What has happened to the ‘European dimension’?”

“What has happened to interdiscplinarity?”

“What hs happened to European innovations?”

Without noticing it myself I had lifted myself off the ground and put myself into helicopter or space ship. I may still agree with what I wrote on these topics. Yet, I couldn’t continue with the topics I had planned to be the next ones. Why?

The trivial reason is that I was caught by urgencies in my day-to-day work. This happens from time to time.

The socio-cultural reason is that I felt myself caught in a historian’s work that has no relevance for present-date VET research. There was a threat that I would be presenting memories for celebrating the glorious pioneering years. Yet, my intention was to produce memories for the future – for facing the challenge of open futures.

The conceptual/methodological reason is that was trying to produce comprehensive analyses on the’ change of climate’ in VET research (in few blog entries). Then, I was trying to outline alternative approaches or  change gendas. This, however, started to look like wrapping up a big bag in which I myself and my peer communities would have to fit in.

What I have learned during my period of silence is that I have to step down from the helicopter or space ship in which I had positioned myself. I don’t need to give up the intention of working with a big picture (that is needed from time to time). However, I have to nurture my thinking on the developments in European VET reseach with news, reports and impressions from field activities.

Luckily enough I have recently participated in such European projects and reviewing activities that promote a new discussion climate (such as the TTplus project and the consultation workshops on VET teachers and trainers). I am not saying that these would directly open new highways to brave new R&D agendas. Yet, they give anchor points for further consideration. In particular the current European activities on the professonal future of  VET teachers and trainers raise several issues.

Therefore, I am pleased to let my historian’s views on trans-nationality, networking and web-supported knowledge sharing mature for some  time. In the meantime I should try to catch, what is hot and what is moving in the present-date European cooperation.

This is a response to Peter Lake’s blog post, since I am not able to submit my comment in his blog.
Peter is being cautious about the social networking phenomenon. And I don’t blame him. There’s a lot going on and the opinions are diverse. But I share the opinion that to form our own ideas […]

There is an interesting report today in the Guardian newspaper on the results of an annual survey, undertaken by the UK based ChildWise charity. The finding include:

Some 30% of the 1800 young people questioned say they have a blog and 62% have a profile on a social networking site. Accrording to the report children and young teens are more likely to socialise than do homework online.

Screen time has become so pervasive in the daily lives of five- to 16-year-olds that they are now skilled managers of their free time, juggling technology to fit in on average six hours of TV, playing games and surfing the net, it suggests.

But reading books is falling out of favour – 84% said they read for pleasure in 2006, 80% in 2007 and 74% this year.

Children who use the internet spend on average 1.7 hours a day online, but one in six spent more than three hours a day online on top of the 1.5 hours they spent on their games consoles. They still have time for 2.7 hours of television – though the report says they tend to multitask, doing these activities simultaneously.

One in three said the computer is the single thing they couldn’t live without, compared with a declining number – one in five – who name television.

Pupils are using the internet less while at school, frustrated by the low-tech access and the restrictions put in place to stop them from accessing inappropriate material.

Younger girls are now catching up with boys in the use of games consoles.