I attended the Elluminate session at #PLENK2010 this evening with a presentation by Martin Weller speaking about Research, Technology and Networks. It was heartening to see almost 100 participants log and participate in a very lively text discussion, even if fewer were willing to use the audio.
I think Martin is overly pessimistic about how social networking and social software is being used in research. Of course there are still barriers to be overcome, particularly the insistence by many institutions on traditional forms of scholarship and research as the basis for future career progression and for funding. And in a comment related to the Open University’s Social Learn, a project he previously led, he showed how business goals can impact against openness in research processes and innovation in products.
However, I am seeing a marked move twoards openess, collaboration and sharing in a number of the projects and networks in which I participate. Access to video conferences has facilitated more collaborative approaches to project reviews and to managing research tasks. Twitter, blogs and other social network applications have allowed us to share work in progress outside immediate project partnerships. And once more, social networks are allowing us to discover new colleagues and friends, outside our narrower institutional or project communities.
I am also convinced that the use of Cloud applications is going to have a major impact on the way we work. In Pontydysgu we have moved to Google Docs in the last month. And without consciously thinking about it, we are able to work together on research documents and even better to comment on each others work and ideas as a work in progress. This would never have happened through emailing drafts between colleagues.
Jen Hughes is working on ideas around Evaluation 2.0. This is also based on the idea of openness and the involvement of wider communities in evaluation processes. We hope to open out an evaluation in progress to all of you int he next week or so see what happens!

I moaned on twitter this evening about the intrusive advertising now showing on Slideshare. Fairly obviously, Slideshare are trying to persuade people to sign up for the recently introduced Premium Accounts. The end of free is in sight with many social software providers turning to premium account models in an attempt to monetize services (or at least pay for bandwidth). And of course this was bound to happen. Whilst in the initial days of Web 2.0, service providers could make money on advertising by poaching advertising budgets from print publications, there has to be a point where advertising money runs out, especially in a recessions.

But this provides a big challenge for using technology for teaching and learning. the last two years has been a period of great innovation, with an increasing focus on pedagogy, rather than technology per se. That in turn has been facilitated by teachers (and learners) being able to themselves choose what applications to use, free from institutional diktat be it by managers, accountants or systems administrators. whilst the cost of premium accounts is generally low (although interestingly not for high bandwidth applications such as video streaming), teachers and learners are going to be forced to decide which of the many available services they wish to subscribe to. And most teachers do not have access to a budget for applications. So does power return to the managers? Will we be forced back to the Learning Management Systems and Virtual Learning Platforms so beloved of systems admins.

In a series of tweets Scott Wilson suggested “we need a new post-web-2.0 strategy” and that “open source and the open web are going to be at the heart of it, and new partnerships with IT departments.” He pointed out that “IT departments are under pressure to cut costs and outsource services; this is a key leverage point and educational technologists may be able to help.”

Scott Leslie joined in the discussion, suggesting that my original tweet fearing a move from the free use of social software by teachers to managerial and IT administrator control “is a false dichotomy that confuses ‘Agency’ with ‘Autonomy’ – there’s a role for system-wide/inst….” He suggested “provisioned systems to replace the “free” ones, but done in ways that maximize learner/teacher agency and choice.” And as an example of such a strategy Carlos Santos proposed the SAPO Campus model. Scott Wilson agreed with Scott Leslie saying “also work on ensuring centrally managed platforms are extensible and flexible for adding new edu tools and apps (even sharepoint!).”

An interesting discussion and one that urgently needs to be taken forward. I wonder if this could be continued as part of the #PLENK2010 course?

I wrote in a previous post that there was a welcome move at the Advanced Learning Technologies Conference in Nottingham this year, away from a focus on technologies towards looking at social and pedagogic issues connected with Technology Enhanced Learning. One session that epitomised this change was ‘New bottles, old wine? A debate on the ethics of educational interventions in popular digital technologies.’

As the abstract for the session pointed out such spaces are outside the control and rules of educational institutions and allow “places and modes that people can inhabit, where communities can form and disband, where ideas, images and information can be produced, stored, shared, tagged, discussed, transmitted and consumed and where diverse expectations have developed about language, humour, posture, taste, fashion, etiquette and behaviour.”

The speakers took different stances towards these issues. Writing before the session Steve Wheeler gave a précis of what the speakers would cover.

Frances Bell will identify private/public as complex reflexive student practice in personal and education use of social media, e.g. Youtube (Lange, 2007) and explore the role of the educator in students’ ethical development.
Andy Black will expose the issues relating to the transnational use of technologies approaches where users will have access to very different levels of technology and even if technology used is the same or similar the way it is deployed is culturally different. The concept is that these differences will decline or morph over time to become transnational & transcultural, resulting in usage that is woven into a global cultural thread.
Mark Childs will raise some of the ethical issues that influence creating learning activities in immersive virtual worlds and offer viewpoints to be debated on the potential responses to students’ unease concerning the experience, cultures and perceptions of virtual worlds, the appropriate balance between authenticity and pseudonymity in virtual worlds and the responsibilities of teachers with respect to protecting those within virtual worlds from the impact of our teaching within them.
Karl Royle will argue that the ethical considerations of gaming are inherently bounded and regulated by the inherent rules of ‘the game’ and that as such are disposed to self regulation, and are about trying to do good or at least minimise harm in achieving a win state.
John Traxler will argue that the universal experience of mobility and connectedness in our societies is leading to transient, ephemeral and overlapping communities each with its own ethics; there are no longer grand narratives of ethics, only partial and local expressions of values and preferences. It’s new wine, new bottles, new drinkers
Steve Wheeler will take a cognitive stance to the issue of ethics in emerging digital environment research. He will hold that users interact and represent themselves in different ways depending on environment and context, switching between identities. Steve will argue that new technologies and tools present new affordances and expectations, and therefore require new approaches.

All very good. these are issues that urgently need exploring. Yet I did not feel the session really lived up to its potential – maybe because the topic is so important and so broad. Perhaps only Karl Royle moved towards exploring new territory, at least for me.

One of the difficulties, I think, is in relating immediate practices and controversies, for example the ongoing arguments over Facebook’s ownership and permissions regime, to wider social and ethical issues.

What might those issues be? Power and control has to be near the top of any list. How is the use of digital technologies changing, reinforcing or breaking down traditional power structures and relationship in education?  And how is the use of digital technologies impacting on traditional class biases in education? More fundamentally, how does our uses of technology impact on rights to education? Do people have a universal right? If so, can we subvert technology to provide universal technology. And of course there are many ethical issues around who provides education – should the state have a duty to provide free or affordable education? Should it have a monopoly on such provision? Should private social software providers be regulated? If so by who? And who makes up the rules and in whose interests?

What of the implications for knowledge development, knowledge structures and knowledge sharing. Surely one of the biggest ethical issues today is attempts to privatise knowledge through copyright legislation.

These are just a few … feel free to add your ideas in the comments. I know the speakers at this inaugural session are planning to take the debate on the road and look forward to the next iteration. But I still wonder how to approach the whole issue of ethics and how to link up day to day practices and issues with larger societal concerns.

The autumn conference season is in full swing. One  of my favourites is Online Educa Berlin – this year being held on 2 and 3 December. If nothing else Online Educa is a great social event – a chance to catch up with friends from round the world. Online Educa also organises a series of pre conference workshops on 1 December. and this year we are organising a workshop for the European funded G8WAY project on educational transitions. Whilst there is a fee for many of the workshops, the G8WAY event is sponsored by the project and is free to participants.

The workshop will focus on the issue of how educational transitions can be made easier for young people through Internet-based services (e.g. career advice, information and guidance).

According to the workshop website the importance of helping young people in their quest to find employment is widely recognised and there is growing interest in the potential of technology-assisted learning when it comes to helping young people make the transition from education to employment. However, this area of learning remains in its infancy and throws up a series of issues for policymakers, researchers and practitioners alike.

The European project G8WAY: Enhanced Gateway to Educational Transition is investigating how social software and Web 2.0 applications can be used to help young people in make transitions.

The following key issues will be explored in the workshop:

• What are the challenges of educational transitions – how can young people start a career in recession-hit European societies?
• What is the potential of social software and Web 2.0 tools in the context of transitions?
• What role can careers guidance and support play in this process?
• What is the future of technology-based learning regarding career education?

The active involvement of participants, exchange of expertise and creation and further development of ideas will be the key elements of this pre-conference workshop.

whilst the workshop is free places are limited and pre registration is necessary. If you are going to be in Berlin, don’t miss our workshop.

Another article reporting from the European Conference on Educational Research held in Helsinki last week.

Most of my time at the conference was spent working on our Amplified project, using multi media and social software to turn the conference outwards and improve the experience for face to face delegates. More reports on this work later in the week.

But I did get to go to two sessions. The first was a symposium entitled ‘Technology WILL NOT save education – views on teaching learning and researching in the Digital Age’ .

Here is the abstract:

Deeply immersed in the Society of Knowledge great efforts, including the use of educational technology have been carried out in order to improve education. Changes in the cultural contexts where education takes place have posed new questions both in educational practice and research. Very often changes in educational practices are subject to factors within the context where they are  pursued and it is probable that the results vary depending on different cultural factors.  Within the field of Educational Technology it becomes essential to manage cultural change in order to make technology happen.

Educational institutions have to provide answers to all agents involved in the educational field: a change of methodology is needed and, in many instances, this will depend upon cultural factors. Thus, cultural contexts have to be taken into consideration in their policies and activities.  Cultural change does not come with technology but with the transformation of educational practices and the revision of  traditional  methodologies. The role of educators is key the same as the position of educational institutions which have to provide the means to facilitate cultural change.

The emergent social networks and Web 2.0 applications have given way to a great variety of educational possibilities which may help consider students, not under traditional categories of race, class and gender but instead taking into account local and global contexts and diversity. Web 2.0 applications are powerful socialization and communication tools that support the process of construction of knowledge and can have an incredible educational potential for instruction.

This symposium seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of research in different fields which provides an outlook from different points of view of teaching, learning and researching in the Digital Age. Its departing point is the assumption that technology will NOT save Education unless cultural change takes place.

The different papers  in this simposium try to account from different viewpoints for aspects which aim at improving education. Thus,  the first paper discusses the need of  networking culture in different disciplines regarding approaches and practices of researchers which have made use of web technologies.   The importante of networking is also revised as a catalyst of social and educational change. The second paper deals with the construction of a new model of curriculum more in relation to new learning needs and approaches  and the eminent role that educators play on it, especially considering their adaptation to change and their practices within teaching and learning processes. The third  paper deals with the use of Personal learning Environments as systems that help learners be in control of their own learning process by setting goals sharing ideas and  managing learning content in both individual and group basis. The last of the papers faces the educational potentialities of Web 2.0 applications as powerful socialization and communication tools that can support processes of knowledge construction and can have an incredible educational potential for Foreign Language instruction.

I chaired the symposium, with my good friends Linda Casteneda, Ricardo Torres and Maria Perifanou presenting and Mar Camacho acting as discussant.

We spent a lot of time thinking about the format, not wishing to do the usual 3 25 minutes presnetations with a short time for questions and discussion. Instead we reverted the usual order, with Mar opening by presenting a brief overview of the ideas behind the symposium and then inviting delegates to provide a brief opinion about our approach.

We then had three ten minute presentations from Linda, Ricardo and Maria. Linda presented research she had undertaken at the University of Murcia in Spain. Basically, despite efforts to introduce technology into the curriculum for student teachers at the university, she concluded little had changed in terms of teaching and learning practice. Her conclusion was that technology on its own will not change anything. To make effective use of new technologies requires fundamental curriculum reform and the development and adoption of new pedagogies for teaching and learning. Ricardo and Maria both reflected on instances of effective practice, drawn from their own work. Ricardo looked at the development of Personal Learning Environments in a programme he teaches in Barcelona. And Maria reported on the development and use of webquests for teaching Italien in Thessaloniki. It had been our intention to group the different issues raised by delegates and speakers and use them to break into smaller discussion groups. However in the end the range of issues and the different levels of experience of participants led us to move towards a single group discussion.

The discussion was successful in terms of the active involvement of nearly all the participants. However it tended to be unfocused. A series of different issues were raised. One prevalent concern was that the rigidity of assessment regimes prevented innovation in pedagogic approaches. Another was the resistance of school and institutional management to change. A third was the attitudes of students, who while expecting the use of technology in teaching and learning, were still reluctant to take control of their own learning processes in the way required for effective use of new pedagogic approaches.

Other issues included digital literacies and teachers dispositions towards using technology for teaching. Whilst they were happy to use it for preparing lessons, for presentations and for administrations, they were less comfortable to use it for teaching and learning in practice.

One interesting issue was who should “set the agenda” for change. One participant was concerned that the way technology was being introduced in education was taking away ‘agency’ from teachers in the classroom.

It was a enjoyable session. But whilst most seemed open to and supportive of our hypothesis, there was little consensus on a way forward.

George Siemens has written a blog post about Blackboard’s take over of Elluminate and Wimbla.I agree with him in saying this is an astute move by Blackboard – however I am not quite sure what he means when he talks about integration allowing mangers to buy the educational process. OK – so Blackboard moves beyond being just a VLE. But the educational process is still dependent on pedagogy, whatever tools are integrated in a single application.

I am also very dubious about his view on the evolution of online learning environments. George says:

Over the last eight years, the market has experience enormous change (web 2.0, virtual worlds, social media, networked learning). But many things have settled in the process. Some universities are beginning to focus on a big-picture view of technology: making learning resources available in multimedia, integrating technology from design to delivery, using mobile technologies, and increased focus on network pedagogy. Blackboard (and LMS’ in general) have been able to present the message that “you need an LMS to do blended and online learning”.

To counter this view, the edupunk/DIY approach to learning has produced an emphasis on personal learning environments and networks. To date, this movement has generated a following from a small passionate group of educators, but has not really made much of an impact on traditional education. I don’t suspect it will until, sadly, it can be commoditized and scaled to fit into existing systemic models of education. Perhaps Downes’ Plearn research project, or OU’s SocialLearn project will prove me wrong (I really hope they do!!). For the purposes of this post, however, the brave new world of online learning will be dominated by LMS like Moodle, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and regional players like Fronter.

I have never seen edupunk being a movement which would move in and takeover the traditional education system. What edupunk does provide is an alternative to traditional pedagogy as well as showing there are other routes than commercialisation of education through technology. I don’t expect any institutional manager to announce a new policy based on edupunk? But what we are seeing is increasing numbers of teachers using social software for tecahing and learning. The impact of that is far harder to measure than the number of VLEs adopted by different educational institutions. It will also probably have a far more profound impact of tecahing and learning and pedagogic approaches to using technology.

The second impact of PLEs, edupunk and social software is in the developing ideas and practice around Open Learning. Knowledge and learning is escaping from the institution. And long term that will be the greatest impact of all.

This presentation by Steve Wheeler has been causing some comments around the edubloggers networks. George Siemens responded saying “The development of the semantic web, linked data, and open data, coupled with location-awareness, recommender systems, augmented reality, data overlays, and similar developments is having a dramatic impact on how people interact with information and each other”.

I’ve just read a neat article by John Popham on “How to amplify your event“. I actually didn’t realise what the word amplify meant in this context. But Pontydysgu is working with the European Education Research Association to ‘amplify’ the European Conference on Educational Research this year. The conference, as far as I know the largest Educational Conference in Europe with some 2200 delegates, in being held in Helsinki from 25 – 27 August. The theme of the conference is “Education and Cultural Change.”

One obvious question is what do we want to achieve? Basically we have three aims. One is to enhance the confernce experience for those attending. ECER is run by some 27 or so networks and with so many attending, it can be difficult to keep in touch with everything going on – or even to just find old friends. We hope the use of technology will help get people together, find old and new friends and allow discussion of ideas – before, during and after the conference. Secondly we hope to start to open the conference outwards – to involve those not able to attend face to face and to enhance connections with the wider communities of education research. And thirdly we are trying to build a small history of the conference – not just through papers – but through recording people’s reflections of their experiences and learning.

Now down to the technology – what are we doing?

Firstly we have agreed a hashtag – #ECER2010 and are encouraging delegates to use the hashtag.

We have set a twitter account – EERA_ECER – and are sending out regular tweets (followers very welcome). We have also added a plug in to the ECER web site to accumulate our tweets – http://www.eera-ecer.eu/ecer/ecer2010/twitter-news/?no_cache=1

We have also set up an ECER2010 group on Flickr and are asking delegates to add their photos to that group. Just go to http://www.flickr.com/groups/ecer2010/ and join the group.

We are planning to stream a number of the keynote sessions – more details soon.

We will be making short videos with twelve of the different network conveners as well as vox pops with conference delegates.

And finally, we will be broadcasting 3 special issues of the Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE internet radio programme from 1300 – 1330 Finnish time (12-12.30 Central European time) on 25, 26 and 27 August. Point your browser at http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u and this will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice. You can also send us your questions and comments by Twitter using the #ECER2010 hashtag. And to follow Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE events throughout the summer join the SoB Facebook group.

So this is our idea for the European Conference on Educational Research Amplified. But what have we left out? What else could we do? All ideas very welcome.

I’ve just spent some time organising my Google docs into folders. Why? Because I have so many of them.

I used to use a very old version of Microsoft word for mac on my desktop machine. When I found it would not deal with docx formats I moved over to open office and Neo Office J. But at the same time I started using Google docs because of the ability to share documents. In fact I had already been using Wordly before Google bought it. However, it seems that Google sat on Wordly for a long time. Although Docs sort of worked it was still clunky compared to a desktop word processor. But with the latest upgrade to docs it now seems a better working environment than any of my local word processors. And off course I can access it from any of my computers or from my phone.

But what excites me is the casual and simple collaboration that online documents enable. Of course wikis always had that functionality. But somehow most of my experiments with collaboration with wikis didn’t quite work. People were unwilling to change another person’s work. And the mark up code was off putting for many.

Furthermore it is very easy to see who you can build an online portfolio using google apps or even a Personal Learning Environment.

So what is the downside? In one word – Google. Do we want to trust our working environment to a mega large multi national corporation making most of its money out of advertising. I sued to be sure that I did not. But now I guess I am getting more pragmatic. Google apps offers a lot of functionality and is free. Especially in present economic times free is good. Of course Google could disappear or do something I hate so much I do not want to use their software any more. But I am backing up my docs to a local version anyway. In some ways the debate is similar to the issue raised at the PLE conference in Barcelona as to whether institutions should be providing PLE applications for learners. My conclusion was that I do not really care who provides a Personal Learning Environment, as long as it is controlled by the learner. And as long as Google continues to allow that degree of control I can see myself increasingly using their applications. At least they are not Blackboard!

Photo Samscam

Its been a week off from the blog. Following the PLE2010 conference in Barcelona I took a short holiday. And since I have been back I have been fighting (unsuccessfully) a power failure in my office. So now I am squatting in a friend’s house and using my laptop.

I have much to say about the PLE2010 conference – I am not quite sure where to start.

Firstly it was a truly social conference – social in the both face to face and distant participants were involved in the different sessions. Social too, in the way the pre-conference discussions ran into the conference proper and then into the discussions at coffee breaks and in the evening. The formal conference was just one part of the whole event. And social in the use of media. Besides the live streaming of many sessions, it woudl appear the conference generated over 5000 tweets on the first day (the tweets are archived here).Indeed, for many of us it was the first chance to meet face to face people we have been collaborating with on line for a long time.

Much of this was down to the design of the conference. the pre-conference publicity and discuxxiosn had been focused on social media and in particualr twitter. And the programme design, from unkeynotes to cafe style sessions, debates amnd workshops, was signed to facilitate social interaction and participation. And it is encouraging that many have said they will relook at how they are organising conferences and draw on our ideas.

But what about the ideas? Firstly it was very heartening to see that we seemed to have moved beyond the stage of defining a PLE by what it is not i.e. not a VLE. Instead participants were looking outwards, at how to support learning. I am not sure how much we shared common understandings and meanings around PLEs (sadly I cannot find a record of the session which tried to arrive at such a common definition) but there seemed sufficient understanding for common debates.

One controversial issue was how far it was possible to provide an institutional PLE. This debate was driven by the folks from SAPO Campus in Portugal who are trying to do just that (and still managing to find time for late night and in depth analysis of the failings of the Portugese football team!). My own take is that I do not mind where the tools for a PLE come from as long as the leaner is in control.

Two ‘discourses’ particularly heartened me. The first was between educational researchers and practitioners and software and technical developers. This is an oft troubled discourse in the ed tech community. It may be that the common understandings around the idea of a PLE are allowing these different groups to work together in new ways. I particularly enjoyed the session on using Google Wave as a PLE and was impressed by the Talkingabout video sharing site. But what charatcterised these ideas – as in others I could not attend but heard from others about – was the innovation in appropriating technologies for pedagogic innovation.

Another – and more problematic but recurrent discourse was the issue of motivation. Participants were trying to develop PLEs with students inside the schooling and university systems. But surveys and anecdotal evidence suggests students are wary being overly focused on what work they need to do to pass exams, rather than exploring ideas and learning. And most students view direct didactic teaching as the best approach to passing their exams. As such they have little time for reflection or indeed little understanding as to why they should engage in such activity. This is problematic. We may consider their longer term learning important and thus view the development of meta-cognition and problem solving a priority. But perhaps inevitably under the present education systems their major concern is just to jump the next hurdle in the education race.

My only personal disappointment was that the major focus for PLE development and implementation for the vast majority of participants was for learners within schools and universities. There was limited interest in work based learning or in learning outside teh existing systems – the very areas where I think PLEs have the greatest potential.

Indeed, I think we have to consider the wider issue of where to locate the PLE debate. Clearly it is not just another instance of educational technology. But neither can it be easily subsumed in considerations of pedagogic approaches to the use of ICT for learning. I increasingly feel that the whole issue of PLEs is closely related to the ongoing discussions around open education. The very promise of PLEs is to understand the use of technology for learning in a new way, in a context where learning becomes part of society and is free and open to all.

But now there is a lot of work to be done. We have over 70 papers and many offers of publications. Most participants seemed to assume that PLE2011 was already on the cards (watch this blog for more news on that). And the bigger question is how we can use the ideas and networks generated by the conference to build a collective community of practice based on networking and sharing. Any thoughts or ideas  very welcome.